


The Dove Descending

by Ruby_Con



Category: Merchant of Venice - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Canon-Typical Antisemitism, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-13
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2020-12-14 11:27:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 28,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21015008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruby_Con/pseuds/Ruby_Con
Summary: Five months after the events of The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is forced to seek help from an unexpected quarter.Please read the notes at the end of each chapter for details of how this fic diverges from canon, and for content warnings.





	1. Chapter 1

I should have been paying better attention. Normally I walked about in a state of heightened vigilance, furtively glancing left, right, scanning the path ahead, watchful for any threat of torment or cruelty, with a kind of fearful awareness of my surroundings. I'd learnt through bitter experience that to do anything less was to put myself in danger, with no hope of aid or justice. It was a chilly autumnal evening, and the light was already draining from the sky. Normally such a twilit setting spurred me to even greater alertness to what was going on around me.

But this time, uncharacteristically, unforgivably, I had allowed my mind to wander. I was thinking of the food I had picked up at the market, and the meal I might make from it, and trying to calculate just how many days I might stretch it out, with my four younger sisters, each a hungry mouth to feed. And so I didn't notice them until it was too late: a little knot of young men, trying just a bit too hard to appear as if they were lounging purposelessly in the square outside my house, their eyes and fists and feet promising violence. I reacted too slowly, attempting to duck back down the narrow lane through which I'd come, and one of them spotted my movement.

'That's her!' he shouted, pulling his companions forward. 'That's the greedy, murderous bitch!

I dropped my bag of food from the market, onions and apples rolling unheeded down the cobblestones, and tried to run, but it was no good. The first blow fell before I'd even left the square, and then they were all upon me, slapping and kicking and punching me until I crumpled. I tried to reach for the little knife I carried, concealed, but one of my attackers spotted it and twisted my wrist until I was forced to let go, kicking the blade out of reach.

'Vicious little viper! I should have known you'd pull a trick like this!' he sneered, and he stamped down hard on my ribs. After that point, I gave up trying to fight back, and curled in on myself, protecting my head while they kicked at me with heavy boots. At some point, one of them retrieved my knife, and slashed wildly at my exposed arms. The pain was unbearable, but better my arms than my chest or stomach, I reasoned.

Two things saved me. I realised after what felt like hours of this — but in reality was probably several minutes — that the men were drunk, which meant both that their blows were weaker, and frequently off target, and that their perceptions were dulled. This worked in my favour, because they weren't paying attention when my sisters came to save me.

The first I was aware of this rescue attempt was when one of the men lurched away from me, swearing, wiping what looked like raw egg from his face. He was soon joined by his three companions, who were all rubbing their eyes and trying to identify the source of this bombardment. While they were all preoccupied, a small figure darted in, dragged me to my feet, and pulled me along behind her. It was my sister Miriam.

'The others are waiting in the lane,' she hissed, ignoring my groans of agony. 'We need to run.'

'Can we get inside the house?' I asked, wincing at my bruised ribs.

'It's no good,' she said in bleak tones. 'They've got three more men watching the house. They've been here for several hours, kicking at the door, drinking, and working themselves up into a rage. We only just managed to climb out one of the back windows, and were trying to hide in wait and warn you.'

We rounded a corner, and stumbled upon our three youngest sisters. Tiny Malkah was clinging to twelve-year-old Chaya, her eyes wide with fear. Naomi dropped the two eggs she'd been holding, and started to run. Already we could hear the shouts of drunken pursuit.

Any plan my sisters might have had went out the window. Miriam picked up Malkah and ran after Naomi, urging Chaya forward. I gritted my teeth, and dragged my injured body after them. The five of us were wild with fear, paying little attention to the direction we took, whether we crossed over canals, how far we got from the false safety of home. All I cared about was keeping my blameless sisters away from the enraged mob of men, who were screaming obscenities at us and yelling about what they would do to us when they caught up. I could tell from the sound of things that they were not far behind.

Our whole world shrank to this deadly chase, the howling men behind us, our feet desperate on the hard stone ground, the houses, shops, and fountains we passed seeming to swim out of focus. Malkah was screaming, her arms clinging desperately around Miriam's neck as we raced onwards. And then my heart constricted. Chaya, in her frenzied, chaotic flight, had led us to a dead end. Miriam's face was grim with hopelessness, as Malkah's wails increased in volume. One of the doors of the houses beside us opened, the noise of our pursuit clearly drawing the attention of its inhabitant.

If I hadn't been so scared, I would never have dared to do what I did next, but it was our last chance. Mustering the last of my strength, I pushed my sisters before me through the open door, following behind them in such a state of terror that I tripped over the feet of the person who had opened the door. I had no more energy to move, and, gasping for breath from my position on the floor, unable to keep the panic from my voice, I said, 'I beg you, close and bar the door! They will kill us!' I was aware, dimly, of the sounds of this taking place, and, with relief, lifted my face from the floor to thank our rescuer. The feet over which I had tripped were clad in well-made leather boots, and I had a moment of near hysteria that even in such a state of fear I was able to notice things such as the quality of a man's boots. And then I cast my eyes higher, and we recognised each other at the same moment, and I knew that my situation had not improved.

'You?' said Antonio. His shocked face was a mirror of my own.

*

I dragged myself to my feet, moving towards the space where my sisters were standing, tense and wary. I knew they all recognised Antonio too, with the possible exception of Malkah, who had been too young, perhaps, to remember the man who had humiliated me, impoverished us, and unmoored us all from the support and sustenance of our home and community.

'I suppose you'll be unbarring the door to let the mob at us, then?' I asked, bitterness suffusing my voice. 'That's if you don't want to grab a weapon and join in yourself.'

Antonio took a long look at the barred door. He looked at Miriam, who was ignoring him and trying to quieten the screaming Malkah, and at Chaya, who appeared to be fighting back tears, clutching Naomi's hand, and finally he looked at me. I must have appeared a frightful sight — my clothes were torn and dirty, my arms were encrusted with dried blood, and I could feel bruises forming on my face. I had to hold onto the wall in order to stay upright, gritting my teeth to keep from crying with pain, fear, and rage.

'If you're going to throw me back to those drunken thugs, could you at least keep my sisters safe behind the door?' I asked, grimacing and clutching at the wall, determined not to compound my humiliation by collapsing to the floor again.

Antonio chose not to answer me, speaking instead to Naomi and Chaya.

'Could you two girls help your sister? Esther will need to lean on you in order to walk,' he said, moving forwards and gesturing for us to follow him into his house.

*

Antonio had had a candle in his hand when he'd come to the door, and he led us through a darkening hallway, which opened out into the typical kind of open courtyard that stands at the centre of most wealthy Venetian merchants' houses. On the other side of the courtyard he opened a heavy door, and we followed the light of his candle into what appeared to be a large kitchen, warm, and bright, and smelling of bread and wood smoke. He took a seat at one of the benches around the heavy wooden table, and gestured that we should do the same. Naomi and Chaya eased me down, wincing, and sat warily on either side, while Miriam and Malkah stuck close, the five of us a tense little huddle facing Antonio.

'Now,' he said, 'tell me what happened.'

'What happened,' I replied scornfully, 'is that, as usual, I was just trying to live my life, fetching food from the market, when a gang of drunken men attacked me in the street without reason! I suppose next you will say that I must have done something to provoke such violence — that would be just like you — but I've done nothing! I behave with utter, blameless, saintly perfection, follow every law, do nothing wrong, and still this kind of trouble follows me! I've never seen those men before in my life, and yet they spent the afternoon lurking outside my house, terrorising my sisters, kicking and beating me, and threatening to do much worse!'

'You didn't recognise them, Esther?' asked Miriam. 'They weren't people you'd dealt with before — debtors?' Her voice was expressionless, and she shot an involuntary look at Antonio at the mention of debtors.

'No, not debtors. They weren't people I met back when Father was alive and I was helping him, nor later, when I ran the business alone. And, as you know, thanks to _him_' — here I gestured furiously at Antonio — 'I've lent no money for the past five months and therefore had no new debtors to work themselves into a murderous rage at the prospect of paying back what they legally owed me.'

'If they weren't debtors, what drove them to such violence?' asked Antonio.

'See! I knew you would assume the attack was _my_ fault! I did nothing to deserve it, but it appears that I invite such attacks simply by walking down the street, provoking men to stamp on my ribs and punch me in the face, and threaten to drown my four-year-old sister in a canal. At best I can expect a few slaps, or to be spat at in the face and insulted — this should be familiar to you, as I recall it was standard behaviour from you and your horrible friends whenever you encountered my father!'

I could feel Naomi trembling beside me, and realised I was on the verge of tears. Being forced to recount this catalogue of woes to Antonio was humiliating, and knowing that he was all that stood between us and the threats outside horrified me. I should have made some attempt to rein myself in, but I always reacted with anger when I was frightened, and the words rushed out of me without control.

'There's nothing we can do about this tonight,' said Antonio finally. 'They didn't see you come in through my door — you must have been running faster than you thought, as I couldn't see them in my little square at the point all five of you tumbled in. They might suspect you're in one of the houses here, but that kind of drunken anger doesn't think clearly, and burns itself out eventually. No one else saw you come in. You can stay here, safe behind the barred door.'

I let out a cautious breath. There was no way I was trusting Antonio, especially when I had my sisters' safety to think about as well as my own! He seemed sincere, but if the world had taught me anything, it was that apparent sincerity often masked hypocrisy, and that I could expect neither justice nor safety from anyone.

'We will talk further about this,' I said at last. 'Do you have a place where my sisters can sleep? Not facing the open square, if possible?' It was an effort to ask for even this much.

Antonio picked up one of the loaves of bread which had been placed on the table, and broke it into pieces, distributing it among my younger sisters, and then ushered them from the room. Miriam shot me a look which plainly meant _don't do anything foolish_ as she carried Malkah away.

Several moments later, Antonio returned. 'I've put them to sleep in the room upstairs with the big bed. Don't worry — it overlooks the interior courtyard, not the square or the canal behind us. Your youngest sister — I'm sorry, I don't know any of their names — was already asleep, holding the bread in her little hands.'

'You don't even know their names — you, who ruined us all?' I said, incredulously. 'Well, I suppose you've taken everything else from us, so you might as well have all our names as well! The young sister, asleep with the bread, is Malkah. Naomi is the redhead — she's eight years old. Next comes twelve-year-old Chaya, and then there's fifteen-year-old Miriam. And then me — my name, at least, you know.'

He said nothing, which only enraged me further. 'Why on earth did you even let us into your house? You hate me! Last time you saw me I threatened to cut out your heart! You've made it quite plain over the years what you think of me — from your perspective the just thing to do would probably have been to kick us all out to face the mob!'

'Believe me, I'm currently regretting that decision more and more,' said Antonio in wry tones. 'Are you quite finished? I'm quite happy to sit here and let you yell at me for a while longer until your anger has burnt itself out, but it seems a waste of energy given the extent of your injuries.'

He was probably correct, and that made me even more infuriated.

'There must be some reason you're prepared to help us,' I muttered angrily. 'You can't possibly think we have money to pay in gratitude — your version of legal _justice_ took care of that — and I can't help but think this is all some monstrous trick, to make us feel safe, only to throw us to the wolves later when our guard is down!'

'Must it always be a trick with you? What do you need me to say to make you believe me? I didn't even recognise you when you fell through the threshold and tripped over my feet, and by the time I did, there was no way I was going to open the door to whatever had put that expression of fear in your and your sisters' eyes.'

I was weary. I could feel the bruises starting to form on my face, back, and ribs, my ankle was twisted, my arms were scarred with knife wounds, my clothes were ruined, I had been dragged by my hair across muddy stones, my sisters were sleeping upstairs, and I was out of options. The effort of hiding just how much pain I was in from Antonio was exhausting.

'I am choosing to believe you,' I said at last. 'For now, at least. Given my choices are the murderous mob outside who kicked my face in and drove my sisters out of their home, and the man who drove my father to an early grave, took half my wealth, and forcibly converted me and my sisters — but who gave my sisters bread and a place to sleep — I'll take the man who isn't trying to hurt me at this very moment. Even if he hates me. But I'll be careful. I'm watching you.'

I ruined this moment of stern warning somewhat by attempting to make an emphatic gesture with my hands, and succeeded only in opening a wound on my shoulder, causing me to gasp with pain. Antonio, sharp-eyed, noticed at once.

'Are you all right? You can't see your own face, but you've got some pretty horrifying bruises coming through, and your clothes look as if you've been dragged backwards across a collection of sharp objects. You need to get cleaned up. You can keep arguing with me and insulting me upstairs.'

He was hauling me to my feet before I could object, kicking ashes on the dying embers of the fire, and leading me from the room. I had a moment of outraged shock at his nearness, at the fact that he was holding my arm, before I realised there was no way I would be able to walk on my own, and allowed him to help me up the flight of stairs, following the light of his flickering candle.

*

'You can't be serious!' I hissed at Antonio, some moments later. 'You expect me to remove my outer clothing in front of you, and let you tend my wounds? Now it all becomes clear: you knew I couldn't offer you any money in thanks for taking us in — but you had a different kind of payment in mind!'

He sighed, and I almost thought I had spied him rolling his eyes. The room he'd taken me was small and boxy, with a bed, a long chair up against the window (shuttered against the night sky), and a few small tables, beside which Antonio had made himself busy lighting candles and lamps. I was swaying on my feet, exhausted, but still too tense with anxiety and anger to relax.

'It doesn't have to be me,' said Antonio. 'If you want, I can wake one of your sisters to do it. But your wounds need to be cleaned and bandaged, or else they will get infected. I've no doubt you can do many things, but cleaning wounds on your own back is not one of them.'

It would have been more sensible to fetch Miriam and get her to help, but I couldn't bring myself to wake my sisters after the day they'd had. And my injuries couldn't wait until the morning. I sank down onto the bed.

'You do it,' I said, grudgingly, to Antonio. 'But I don't trust you. You'd better only look at the parts of me covered by injuries — I'll know if you don't!' I started to remove my muddy, ruined clothing, frustrated to notice that my hands were shaking.

Antonio picked up the cloth and bowl of water he'd apparently conjured from nowhere, and sat cautiously down beside me. 'What about this,' he said. 'I'll give you the knife I carry around, like any Venetian, for protection, and if I do something you don't like, something that makes you feel uncomfortable, you can cut out my heart.'

He pressed the blade into my hands.

'I knew this was all a joke to you,' I muttered irritably, but I knew my tetchiness was an attempt to cover my discomfort at the situation in which I found myself, and my anger lacked any real bite. I removed the last layer of clothing with some difficulty (was it actually _stuck_ to my body with dried blood?), and tried to relax as Antonio moved around behind me.

I had, sadly, a great deal of prior experience in having wounds cleaned, and knew it would hurt, but Antonio was gentle as he moved the damp cloth across my back. The water had been warmed, but whatever he'd added to it did sting, brief flares of singing pain on top of the duller, constant agony of the bruises. I concentrated on the knife in my hands, turning it over and over in my lap, watching it glint in the candlelight.

After a while, the motions of the cloth were replaced with Antonio's hands as he rubbed what I supposed was salve into the wounds. I tried not to react when he touched particularly tender spots, uneasy with the intimacy of our situation. The cut across my shoulder must have been especially deep, and it hurt whenever I moved my arms.

Eventually he stopped, and handed me the salve. 'Do you want to clean your arms and the front of your body?" he asked. 'I don't want to alarm you, but if they're even half as bad as your back then they're bound to be pretty awful.'

I took the cloth from his hand, and tried to dip it in the water, but the moment I tried to clean the cuts on my arm, I reopened the injury on my shoulder, and couldn't stop the involuntary cry of pain that escaped my lips. The knife dropped to the floor with a clatter, and as I bent to retrieve it, I caught a glimpse of my ribs and stomach. They were a mass of bruises, more blue and purple than clean skin, violently coloured with the force of myriad kicks and blows. My knuckles were grazed and filthy, and my wrist still hurt from when one of my assailants had twisted it. I took in this catalogue of injuries before I realised that Antonio was holding me, gently, gingerly, in what appeared to be a gesture of comfort.

My voice was shaky as I offered him back the cloth and the salve. 'Can you ... can you please do it?'

*

I was ashamed to admit that I cried while he cleaned the injuries on my ribs. His hands, and his eyes, were as gentle and impersonal as any doctor's, but I was mortified to find myself in such a position of vulnerability with him, and shocked at the extent of my injuries, which were by far the worst I'd ever experienced. I was reacting, too, to how near an escape I had had — I had no doubt that if I hadn't got away, the gang of men would have killed me, and possibly all four of my sisters. Normally I could cope with how utterly alone we five were in the world, but the fact that we were reduced to hiding in the house of my worst enemy filled me with hopelessness.

Antonio said nothing, just let me cry everything out, moving from my ribs, and some kind of injury across my collarbone to the many cuts and gashes on my arms. When he was finally finished, he handed me a clean garment (one of his own, I assumed, given its size, and what I knew of his living circumstances), and stood to walk over to one of the low tables, from which he produced a cup of wine.

'You will need this for the pain, and to help you sleep,' he said. 'Please, don't try to argue with me. I have never seen someone so covered with injuries — it is beyond me how you managed to run as far as you did.'

'I can run halfway across Venice when there's a mob like that behind me,' I said. 'I've had plenty of practice.' I didn't want to drink the wine — I didn't want to sleep at all, as there was still some part of me that felt I should spend every moment awake, with watchful eyes on Antonio, in case he slipped out of the house and betrayed us — but I was exhausted, and tired of being afraid. I knew even moving to the room where my sisters slept was beyond me.

I moved slowly back across the bed, until I was leaning against the wall beside it, pulling the blankets with me. Antonio handed me the cup of wine, and sat down carefully beside me, as if I were a volatile, wounded animal. 'Do you want me to leave? Or to sit further away?' he asked.

'Let's just pretend I want you to stay because I don't trust what you'll do out of my sight,' I said at last, lifting the cup to my cracked, stinging lips.

His knife was back in his hands, but he stretched an arm across me, and placed it on the bed beside me, within easy reach.

'If that's what you need to say to feel comfortable with me being here, that's fine by me,' he said, and he leaned his head back against the wall, relaxing into the space beside me. The candlelight dipped and flickered, and I feared I would never feel comfortable enough to close my eyes. At last, however, I slipped into sleep, my mind a tense sea of questions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic diverges from canon in two major ways: Shylock is a young woman, and she is the oldest of five sisters. Her father was a moneylender, and she witnssed the various antisemitic attacks and abuses he experienced. Upon his death, she took over his business, and it was she who experienced the events of The Merchant of Venice. In this AU, the character of Jessica, and her subplot, is missing. 
> 
> This chapter contains descriptions of antisemitic violence, as well as of the resulting injuries. Please read the notes of all future chapters for chapter-specific content warnings.


	2. Chapter 2

I jolted awake, and had a moment of panicked disorientation as I opened my eyes to an unfamiliar room, struggling to remember how I'd got there. As my breathing steadied and I took in my surroundings, the events of the last night came flooding back. Unfortunately, so did the searing pain from my injuries. It was hard to tell which part of me hurt the most — it was as if my entire body were one continuous wound.

I appeared to be in a narrow bed, having fallen asleep leaning against the wall. At some point in the night, someone had covered me with a blanket, and I dug my fingers into the rough wool, trying to feel something other than the constant sting of my injuries, and the memory of fists and booted feet. Clasping the blanket around my shoulders, I made an awkward attempt to get up from the bed, intending to seek out my sisters. I had forgotten my injured ankle, however, and when I tried to stand up my legs folded beneath me, and I clattered to the floor, alerting the other inhabitant of the room.

Antonio appeared to have spent the night dozing in the low chair by the window, his long legs stretched out along its length, but my chaotic movements woke him, and he was up in an instant, striding across the room to help me to feet.

'Let me go!' I muttered furiously. 'I am capable of standing and walking without your assistance!'

'Should you even be moving around in your state?' he asked, rubbing his eyes.

'I'll be the judge of that!' I said, shrugging his hands off violently. The motion made me clutch my head in pain, but I couldn't afford to let Antonio continue to fuss about me. Somewhere in the house, my sisters were huddled, and I needed to find them, and figure out what to do next.

*

Three agonising steps later, and I knew I would have to admit defeat. I could barely move. My head was spinning, my foot seemed unable to support my weight, and I could feel the cut on my shoulder threatening to open again. I ground my teeth in frustration, and turned back to Antonio.

'Where are you keeping my sisters? I need to find them, and reassure them that you didn't throw me out to a mob while they slept.'

Antonio did not rise to this bait, but simply took my arm, and slowly, carefully supported me as we walked from the room. As we moved through a dim hallway, he took care to keep to my glacial pace, matching his steps with my own. I was irritated to notice that I needed to clutch at his arm in order to remain upright.

'Your sisters are in here,' he said, pointing at a closed door. 'I put them in the larger of the two bedrooms in this part of the house. I've heard no sound from them all morning, but I don't know if they're still asleep. Do you want to go in alone?'

'You might as well come too, since I can't seem to move two steps without clinging onto your arm for support,' I said, grudgingly. 'In any case, better to keep you close by to keep an eye on you.'

Antonio appeared to be stifling a laugh as he knocked on the door.

There was a long pause, and then my sister Miriam's voice piped up.

'Who is it?' she asked. Only I could hear the undercurrent of fear.

'Esther,' I replied. 'I'm here with Antonio — you'll understand why when you see me. Are the younger ones awake?'

Miriam pushed the door open, bursting out in a flurry of dark hair, wide eyes, and anxious hands, and rushed to my side. She caught sight of my face, and her expression was horrified — the bruises must have been fearsome — and then she was pushing Antonio's arm away, and catching me in a tight hug. I could feel her, trembling, through the blanket.

'Oh, Esther!' she said. 'What have those brutes done to you?' There was a sob in her voice, and it broke something inside me. I sank to the floor, pulling my sister with me, and we cried, locked in each other's arms.

After several moments, I became aware that our other three sisters had joined us in the hallway. I could feel their arms around us, and Malkah was clumsily stroking my hair, whispering what she clearly felt were comforting words into my ear. I drew her into the circle of my arms, folding her between me and Miriam, wishing that were enough to protect her from the cruelties of the world.

Eventually, I came back to myself. It was not that I'd cried until there were no tears left, more that I realised someone was going to have to start making decisions about the terrible situation in which we'd found ourselves, and I wanted it to be me, and not Antonio. Extricating myself from Miriam's arms, I made a shaky attempt to stand up, swaying on my feet, trying to ignore the surge of pain in my head.

'Thank you very much for opening your door to us last night, and barring it to the mob,' I said to Antonio. 'As you can see, my sisters and I are all awake now, so we will leave you in peace now and take up no more of your time.'

'Esther,' he said. 'Stop. Think. While I will not keep you for a minute longer than you want to be here, pause for a minute and _think_. Your sisters have had nothing to eat beyond a slice of dry bread since last evening. They have been chased through the city by a gang of drunks who terrified them and threatened appalling violence. If they got a restful night's sleep last night I'll be astonished. And you — you are so unsteady on your feet that you can't take two steps without collapsing. If you are so determined to leave, I'll not prevent you, but it seems a waste to have expended so much energy keeping your family safe, only to head out into uncertainty and danger again.'

I didn't know how to tell him that I didn't want to be in his debt any further than I was already. I didn't like this uneasy sense of safety I'd found within his walls. I wanted him to stop being helpful, and kind, and, worst of all, reasonable.

Malkah ruined my moment of pride and self-reliance by slipping out from behind Miriam and loudly announcing that she wanted breakfast, 'and a cup of warm milk.' 

'I don't know why I even bother teaching you all to depend on no one but each other,' I grumbled, 'if you go about asking favours from the first man who saves you from a murderous mob.' It looked as if the decision had been made for me. We were staying — for breakfast at least.

*

Over breakfast, Antonio and I planned what to do next. He'd introduced us to his two elderly servants — he could hardly have done otherwise, given there was no way they'd fail to notice the five of us cluttering up the kitchen, Malkah scrambling about underfoot as the meal was prepared. But his introduction was sparse on details: our names, the fact that we would be staying 'for a while,' and no further explanation as to our reasons for our current residence. If the servants — a married couple called Giovanni and Marina — had any thoughts on the matter, they kept them to themselves. I pushed aside my worry that they might compromise our safety by betraying our presence in Antonio's house to deal with my more immediate concern: collecting belongings from my house, and assessing any damage the mob might have done. This, inevitably, provoked yet more disagreement.

'You can barely move, Esther,' said Miriam, treacherously agreeing with Antonio as she crammed warm bread into her mouth. 'How do you seriously think you will be able to get back and forth halfway across Venice safely, especially if some of those men are still hanging around our house and you have to get away quickly?'

'Well, I'm not letting any of you head off there on your own, or with this one,' I replied, nodding at Antonio.

Miriam sighed, and helped Malkah to fill yet another cup of warm milk. 'One day,' she said, in weary tones, 'you are going to have to accept that you cannot do everything on your own, and do not have to carry everything that afflicts this family on your own shoulders. If you insist on going yourself, you are taking Antonio with you, and I'm not going to argue further with you about it.'

'Antonio might have thoughts on the matter, and better things to do with his time,' I muttered, mutinously, but I knew the matter had already been decided. After forcing down the last mouthful of bread and cheese, I rose from the table, supported by Antonio, and we made our way laboriously to the house's entrance. I was disturbed to notice that my heart began to beat fast with anxiety the moment the bar was lifted from the door — a sensation that only worsened as I took Antonio's arm and stepped out into the sunlit morning.

We did not speak much as we made our way across the awakening city. Every ounce of my strength was focused on reining in my growing sense of fear and tension, and trying to avoid crying out from the pain of my various injuries. I had been too absorbed in escaping pursuit last night to notice the direction in which my sisters and I had fled, but now I marvelled at the great distance we had travelled, crossing over several major canals and through at least three different neighbourhoods. Midway through our journey I realised Antonio assumed my sisters and I still lived in the ghetto, and was guiding us back in that direction.

'You are going the wrong way,' I said, and my voice felt cracked with anxiety. I pulled on his arm, correcting the direction in which he was heading. 'We don't — we can't live within the Jewish community any more. It's this way.'

We walked on.

My feet stopped moving as we drew closer to the house, causing Antonio to come to an abrupt halt. I was furious with myself for this obvious, involuntary sign of weakness, and covered my actions by pretending to scan the square and alleys for activity, checking if any of the gang of men from the night before remained in the area. However, everything looked normal, the everyday bustle of activity papering over the violence that had been done the night before. I took a deep breath, and led us towards the entrance to the house.

'My sisters will have barred the front door,' I said. 'They told me they escaped through the back window — if we want to get inside, we'll have to retrace their steps.' Antonio nodded, and we made our way towards the back of the house. Once there, he lifted me up to the open window — his hands on my bruised ribs were an agony — and I fell through awkwardly, landing in a heap on the floor. I could hear Antonio clambering through the space behind me as I pulled myself to my feet.

The light was dim in this corner of the house, and as my vision adjusted I took in my surroundings, trying to see them as if for the first time, through Antonio's eyes. The room was small, and dark, and almost empty of furnishings — very different from the gracious, richly decorated settings of his own home, or even from the cozy warmth of my former house in the ghetto. I could sense him taking in the bareness of the setting, the low bed and storage chest standing alone in the cold room.

'It's this way,' I said, pulling Antonio further into the house.

I was mentally creating a list of supplies I would need to collect and carry back, weighing necessity against my own ability to hold and carry the requisite items. Clean clothes were obviously essential, if only to avoid continuing to wander about in an ill-fitting shirt of Antonio's, but would we be staying away long enough to require new clothes for my sisters as well? Taking them seemed to signify I was accepting a long stay in Antonio's house, and I wasn't ready to confront what that meant. I took refuge in ordering him about.

'Go into the kitchen and gather up any of the perishable food,' I said. 'I don't want to waste anything that might spoil if we leave it here. Then open up that chest in the corner, and help me over to it — I need to sort through the contents and rescue anything I wouldn't want to risk being stolen.'

Antonio did as I requested, and even dug out a length of cloth that could be used to wrap all the items we gathered, making them easier to carry. He said nothing as I crouched in the corner of the central room of the house, removing a loose wooden panel from the wall to retrieve the meagre store of coins which I had hidden. I slipped the pouch under my borrowed shirt. My last action was to check the wooden beam across the door, ensuring that it was secure enough to withstand further assaults. Satisfied with the security of the house, I limped back to the back bedroom and its open window, and, after a brief argument with Antonio as to whether I needed him to leave first and help lift me down to the ground, or whether I could make my descent unaided, we departed. I won the argument, but when I landed with a crash on the hard stone ground, with an array of new grazes on my hands and a fresh burst of pain in my ankle, it didn't really feel like winning.

*

There were more people on the streets as we made our return, and I kept my head as low as I dared, fearful I would be recognised. I wondered what people made of my bruised face, which was no doubt luridly visible. Then again, Venice was prone to sudden bouts of violence, and perhaps its marks on my body were unremarkable.

I tried to be more observant of the path we took on our return, furtively taking in landmarks, canals and squares crossed, and every twist and turn. Antonio was being helpful right now, but I knew all too well how quickly safety could turn to threat, and how naive it was to place my trust in anyone other than my four sisters. Life had taught me constant vigilance, and the need to be able to make a quick retreat, and I wasn't taking any chances.

We entered the little square which led to Antonio's house, and that was when it happened. A little knot of drunk men, singing and shouting, pushed their way past us, jostling and shoving, bumping painfully against my side. My mind leapt straight from wondering how the group had managed to become so drunk at such an early hour to a fog of panicked fear. I could feel my whole body shaking, and my breath came in ragged gasps. My legs would have given way if it wasn't for Antonio, steady beside me, speaking in careful tones in my ear.

'It's not the same men. It's not the drunks from last night. Focus on my voice, and your feet on the stones. Take a step with your left foot, and then with your right — yes, like that. Keeping walking forward. We will need to go through the back entrance of the house — from the canal. Are you steady enough on your feet for that?'

'With your help, yes.' I was trembling as I answered him, shocked at how thoroughly overwhelmed such a small thing — a loud group of drunks — had made me. It felt as if heavy stones were placed on my neck and chest, weighing me down. Antonio kept talking, a gentle stream of inconsequential questions which forced me to respond, distracting me from the pain and fear until we had clambered down the side of a bridge, across several boats and through a set of doors which opened into the stairs I recognised as leading from one level of Antonio's house to the other. He began to make his way in the direction of the kitchen, where I assumed my sisters were still ensconced, but I resisted, dragging him back up the stairs towards the room where I had spent the night. I needed time to compose my thoughts, so that I could return to Miriam and the others calmer, with my brave face restored.

Antonio helped me to sit in the window seat, and closed the door to the room, seeming to sense I needed to feel enclosed, to place as many barriers between myself and the terrors of the outside world as possible. He leaned against the wall, his eyes watchful. I removed the little pouch of coins from underneath the shirt, and twisted it around in my hands. My breathing slowed, my heart stopped skittering like a frightened animal, and, finally, I felt the tension leaving my body. In that moment, at least, I was safe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains mentions of the injuries incurred by a violent, antisemitic attack. It also depicts a character experiencing a panic attack.


	3. Chapter 3

Things settled into a strange, restless pattern after that. Antonio didn't ask us when we were leaving, and I carefully avoided raising the issue. I moved myself and the meagre bundle of belongings into the room with my sisters. After one night spent sleeping cramped up in the bed with all four of them, Malkah's little feet kicking at the bruises on my back, Chaya ending up with all the blankets, a second bed materialised in the room, pushed up against the wall. We didn't see much of Antonio during the day — I assumed that once he'd assured himself that we weren't going to wreak havoc on his house or abscond with every item of his belongings not nailed down, he decided it was safe to leave us on our own and attend to whatever business he'd neglected since we showed up on his doorstep.

Giovanni and Marina made it clear that we could help ourselves to food from the kitchen and stores, and sometimes joined us for morning or noonday meals around the big kitchen table, smiling cheerfully at Malkah's exuberance, the strange leaps Naomi's imagination took, and Chaya's earnest solemnity. I don't think Miriam ever completely let down her guard, and I certainly didn't. I was keeping a careful mental account of all the food we ate, subtly pushing my sisters to select less costly items (meat was absolutely out of the question, unless Antonio happened to be there at the meal and had requested Marina serve specific dishes, and I had a good idea of which spices, fruits and grains were in particularly short supply this year, and therefore which were likely to have extremely inflated prices). I had no idea how I was going to pay for everything we were consuming — growing children were always so _hungry_ — but the idea of simply accepting the food as hospitality made me deeply uneasy.

I still had no idea how Antonio had explained our presence in the house to his servants, and felt a constant, gnawing sense of worry that he, or they, might inadvertently let slip to others that we were there. I couldn't get the image of the howling mob out of my head, and while we were treated with nothing but polite, impersonal kindness, I was still terrified that our host and his household would suddenly drop the act and betray us in some horrifying way.

After about a day living with Antonio, my three younger sisters clearly felt comfortable enough to range more widely around his house, playing in the interior courtyard, clattering up and down the various staircases, hiding in storerooms, and exploring every room. Miriam and I tried to maintain a vague sense of where our sisters were at any given time, and stuck more narrowly to bedroom and kitchen, helping Marina and Giovanni with food preparation and other household tasks. Apart from anything else, I was still weak and injured, and the bruises and gashes on my body still caused me a lot of pain if I moved in the wrong way.

I kept the bundle of coins tied under my clothing at all times.

*

After three days of this, I found myself relaxing in spite of myself. It was hard not to — being warm, and well fed, and watching Naomi and Malkah sing clapping rhymes in front of the massive kitchen fire was restorative, after the cold, fearful months the five of us had spent in our cramped rented lodgings. I'd spent the morning helping Miriam make bread, while Marina had set a large vegetable soup boiling, and left it simmering away, with instructions to make a start on eating it whenever we felt hungry. She and Giovanni had left for the market.

It was one of the rare times Antonio was at home for the noonday meal, and he sat across from me at the table, frowning over what appeared to be accounts. Miriam had been slicing the bread, and set it down between us, ready to mop up the rich soup.

'We are going to eat, now, Antonio, even if you aren't ready,' she said, motioning to Chaya to start wrangling Naomi and Malkah to the table, and moving to the pot of soup to begin serving it up.

'No, I'll join you all,' he replied. 'I'm certainly happy to put all this aside for now' — here he waved the account papers in the air for emphasis — 'and make a pause for the meal. I lost track of time, but it's nice to be at home with some company for lunch.'

'You think _you're_ losing track of time?' I asked. 'At the moment I scarcely remember what day it is!'

'Well _I_ know what day it is,' announced Chaya, pushing soup and bread towards Malkah, who attacked both with noisy enthusiasm. 'It's Friday. We've been here for nearly five days.'

Malkah looked up from her soup. 'Friday!' she said. 'We love Fridays, don't we, Esther? Shabbat begins on Fridays, and we light the candles and say the blessing, and eat our special Shabbat food!'

Miriam nearly dropped a bowl of soup on the table in front of me, and as it was she set it down with such shaky violence that it made a deafening clank. I could feel her speechless horror in the way she stood behind me. My hands were trembling as I gripped the bowl.

'That's what we used to do, Malkah. We don't light the candles or celebrate Shabbat any more, now that we are all Christians. We go to the little church on Sundays — in the square near the fountains, remember?'

My words were directed at Malkah, but I kept my eyes on Antonio, trying to sense whether he accepted what I said, or whether his long enmity and distrust would resurface. 

'Yes,' said Malkah. 'We go to the church on Sundays, the day after Shabbat finishes. I can never understand what they're saying in the church.' With that settled, she returned her attention to her soup.

'That's because they're speaking Latin,' I said, trying to keep my voice light as I spooned soup into my dry mouth and attempted to read Antonio's expression. He was looking at me as one might at a tricky series of accounts calculations, his own soup untouched before him.

'Miriam,' I said, trying to keep the fear and urgency out of my voice, 'take Malkah and Naomi out to the fountain in the courtyard to clean their faces. They've both finished their food.'

I hoped she would read my true instructions between the lines: _take them outside this room, start gathering our things, and get ready to flee_. Malkah looked ready to protest that she was still hungry, but Naomi took one look at me, and ushered her younger sister from the room.

Chaya had dropped silently onto the bench next to me, and was trying valiantly to eat her soup in an unconcerned manner, chattering about inconsequential things in slightly hysterical tones. I had given up on eating altogether; it was as if my fear had robbed me of the ability to swallow. I kept shooting glances at Antonio, who was regarding us silently.

After I had judged that a sufficient amount of time had passed, I nudged my remaining sister.

'Go and see what has happened to them,' I said. She slipped from the room, leaving me alone, across the table from Antonio.

*

I couldn't decide if it would be more effective to ignore the conflagration Malkah had just lit and try to direct his attention elsewhere, or address it head on with a lot of denial and bluster about church attendance. His silence was making me deeply uneasy — if he'd erupted into angry shouting or threats, at least I would have known how to react. Likewise, violence: I knew how to handle violence. But this quizzical, still silence weighed heavily on me. Every potential question Antonio could ask me felt like a maze, a trap.

We both began speaking at once.

'So,'

he began, at the same moment that I started mumbling about _checking on where my sisters have got to_. I pushed myself up from the table shakily, and made my way unsteadily from the room, praying that he wouldn't follow. Unfortunately, I was not to be that lucky.

And so it was that Antonio was right on my heels as I limped out of the kitchen, and right beside me to take in the scene that awaited us: Miriam and Chaya struggling to lift the heavy beam from the front door of his house, while Malkah grizzled and Naomi, tears of fright in her eyes, attempted to quieten her down. There was no believable lie I could tell to distract him from what was obviously happening: my family attempting to flee his house undetected, in the face of the terrible secret that Malkah had innocently revealed.

I slumped against the wall, bracing myself for the explosion of violent rage, accusations, or threats to denounce us to the authorities for our obviously false conversions that would surely follow.

Miriam was still grimly persisting in her attempt to unbar the door. Naomi was watching Antonio fearfully, struggling to keep from crying, holding a wriggling, wailing Malkah by the hand. With several swift, long strides Antonio had crossed to the door, lifted the beam (Chaya ducked out of the way, dragging Miriam behind her), and pushed open the door.

He stood in the doorway, gesturing at the street outside.

'Do you want to leave? Here — the door is open.' His voice was very steady, and very angry.

Miriam and Chaya had drawn back, as if they couldn't bear to be near him, and the five of us must have appeared a pitiful, desperate huddle, clustered against the wall. I was well versed in dealing with violence directed at myself, and with the fear that I carried with me constantly in the face of the coiled threat of such violence, but I couldn't bear to see it directed at my sisters. I felt very weak, and Antonio suddenly seemed very tall. The humiliation of the courtroom, at the futility of setting myself against the privileged might of Christians using the law as a weapon, at being forced into such a shameful, pleading compromise out of fear for my sisters, came flooding back to me. I felt so very, very small.

We remained frozen there for several moments: Antonio, framed by the doorway, glaring down at us with a kind of controlled fury, my sisters and I looking desperately from him, to the street outside, to each other, and then back again. It was as if we were all stuck in indecision and unable to move because of it. The pain of my injured ankle shocked me into action. I turned to Antonio.

'May I ask one thing of you,' I began. 'One small thing. My sisters and I will go back into the house. Come with us, and listen to me — just listen, while I explain. You will probably not like what I have to say, and I have no doubt it will make you very angry. All I ask is that you listen, and you keep that anger contained until I have finished explaining, and that once I have explained, you allow my sisters to leave. You can do what you like to me, only let them leave.'

There was no point trying to keep my voice steady: I was terrified, and it was obvious to him. He looked at me steadily for a moment — I fought not to flinch when his gaze caught my own — and then made his answer.

'That's two things you've asked for. Two, and not one: to listen to you, and to let your sisters leave. I'm better at reading between the lines of contracts and promises, these days,' he said, with a wry smile. 'But I accept. Come inside, all of you, and I will listen to Esther.'

*

We settled not back in the kitchen, but instead on the cluster of stools and benches set out in the courtyard, which at this time of day was flooded with sunlight. I noticed that my younger sisters had seated themselves on either side of me, as if they were some sort of protective flanking as we threw ourselves into battle — which, I supposed, we were. Antonio, sprawled on one of the stools with his long legs outstretched, seemed to take in our respective positions (him facing us, like a judge deciding our fate), and moved the position of the stool slightly, so that he was at a less adversarial angle. That he was aware enough to do such a thing gave me hope — hope that I could talk our way out of this, or at least convince him to let my sisters leave and escape whatever terrible fate he had planned for me.

I took a deep breath, and began.

'Five days ago, you opened your door to us and saved us from what would almost certainly have been death, or at least very serious violence. I still find it hard to believe that you chose to do so — given that the two of us had been locked in enmity for so long beforehand, and given the circumstances in which we had last encountered one another, prior to my sisters and me tumbling through your doorway on Monday night. I ... do you need me to recount those circumstances again? Do you need reminding? I hope not; I find it very upsetting to talk about.'

It was torture to even admit that much. Thankfully, Antonio gestured for me to continue.

'You saw on Monday that even though my sisters and I are now Christians in the eyes of this city, it offers us no protection, if a mob suddenly decides it wants to throw its drunken attention in our direction. To such people, we will always be an acceptable target: Jews, moneylenders, weak outsiders who will be blamed for their violence if we try to fight back and assumed to have invited and provoked it in some way. It was thus when my father was alive, and when I worked as his assistant, and it remained so after he died, and after ... after the court case, and after you took our money, and forced our conversion. Even after we left the ghetto, and even after the world was able to observe us attend Mass every Sunday, it remained so. As I knew it would.'

Antonio looked as if he wanted to say something, but I held up a hand to forestall him.

'You are, I hope, perceptive enough to have noticed during our time here how deeply I care about my sisters, how much I worry about their safety. When I was in that courtroom, and realised it was useless — that the law would not protect me, that keeping within the letter of the law was a weapon that could be twisted against me, and that people would rejoice to see that happen — my only thought was to protect my sisters. Everything I agreed to after that moment was for their sake. It was for their sake that I accepted the conversion, and forced them to do the same — for all that it was only me that this was required of. But I knew converting would cast me out of my home and my community, and the loss of that, along with my money and business, would render my sisters destitute, and so I forced them out of our community with me. Or perhaps I did so for selfish reasons, so I wouldn't be completely alone. I made that choice for them, for their safety and protection.'

I could feel Miriam gripping my hand, very, very tightly. It gave me the strength to press on, to drag these horrific memories and painfully buried emotions out of myself, to give them voice to the person who had caused them.

'But we did it. I said the words, and I made my sisters say them too. We separated ourselves from our home and community and from any support they might have been able to offer. We went to Mass every Sunday, and knelt, and gestured, and said whatever words we were supposed to. We complied with the letter of the law. I chose for them, so that they might have a hope of survival. I cannot imagine you have ever been faced with that kind of grim choice, and I don't know if I can make you understand — with your big house, and your wealth, and the respect and adoration you seem to engender among almost every segment of Venetian society — what it feels like to be backed up against a wall with all your options exhausted. Probably I cannot make you understand, since you were the one who put me in that situation.'

I didn't dare to look at Antonio. I was trying to get the words out of me with as little emotion as possible — to break down in tears would be intolerable. I tried to focus on the importance of what I was trying to do, what I was trying to save.

'But you will probably be able to understand that I, too, have been a lot more careful about the exact wording of contracts, pledges, and legal rulings in recent times. My defeat in court at the hands of you and your friends required my conversion — and I made the decision to drag my sisters along with me in that — and it required me to continue to live as a Christian, but it was silent on what else I could do around that, in the spaces between. I was not forbidden from lighting candles on a Friday night, or eating special meals on Friday evenings, and during the day on Saturday, doing things which gave my sisters a restored sense of calm, and home, in disorienting circumstances. It was for them. For familiarity and comfort.'

'And yes,' I continued, 'you are rightly thinking that I'm pushing the law and my own pledged word to the very limits, and that I must know what this looks like, or I wouldn't have tried to hide it, or deny it when Malkah, in her innocent trust, revealed it. I know. In telling you this, I have undone everything I managed to salvage by converting. You could ruin us, beyond what you did to us those months ago, in that courtroom. I have given you an explanation, and all I can do is beg you to accept it, and let my sisters leave.'

The words had poured out of me — I suppose pleading for my sisters' lives lent me a kind of desperate eloquence — and revealing so much (even half of the truth) left me exhausted. I didn't dare look at Antonio's face — I couldn't bear it — so I adopted a trick that I had learnt after years of bitter experience: I watched his hands. People's hands and shoulders are sometimes as revealing as their eyes, and over the years I had learnt to observe them for the warning signs of sudden explosions of violence, to duck from blows before they fell. His were very still.

'I don't know how to respond to all of that,' he said eventually. 'I don't even know how you _want_ me to respond. I believe you when you say that all your choices have been to protect your sisters — having observed you all together in my house, it is obvious how deeply you love them, and how fiercely you fight to defend them. As for the rest, I don't even know what to think. You upended my world when the five of you fell across my doorstep.'

'Forced you to think of us as frightened people,' muttered Miriam bitterly.

'There's some truth in that,' he admitted. 'Being here, within these walls, with me — it obviously takes all kinds of courage. I can see that. I can see what it costs you. So here is what I have decided to do.'

Miriam and Naomi were gripping my hands. I could feel the blood rushing to my face, my chest tightening with anxiety.

'You have told me ... I don't think it's the entirety of the truth, but it is _a_ truth, part of the truth, and perhaps that is all I should expect right now. And based on the things you have told me, I would have to be heartless' — here, Miriam snorted — 'to cast Miriam, Chaya, Naomi and Malkah outside, alone, with no money, back to those cold, empty lodgings where they were terrorised by gangs of drunks. You said you made your choices based on whether you felt they best protected your sisters, Esther. So make your choice now: I will open that front door wide, and stand aside, and all five of you can leave right now. I will let you leave, and your leaving will not be followed by any vicious denunciations of you to the law by me. You are free to go, and I will not hinder you, nor make your path more dangerous once you've left. Or instead, we can pretend that I had no conversation with Malkah about Friday night candles, or ... Shabbat? I heard nothing of any kind about such matters. You can all stay here, as you have been up until now, as safe as you were when I first let you in and barred the door to the mob. I promise.'

'All our troubles began because _you_ were unable to fulfill the requirements of your promises and agreements,' I said, but the defensive anger had drained out of me when I had realised he wasn't going to separate us or denounce me as a false convert.

He sighed, and didn't rise to this bait.

Malkah made the decision for us by lying down on the courtyard floor, announcing she was sleepy, and demanding a second helping of the bread and soup. I wasn't certain if all three of my other sisters were happy with the choice to remain — I could sense that Miriam was really uneasy — but I weighed what Antonio had said against the hopelessness of our situation were we to leave his house, and realised that, yet again, I was going to have to trust him. It was an uncomfortable sensation.

'We will stay,' I said. 'At least for now. At least until we've all had a chance to have a proper lunch.'

And I guided Chaya and Naomi back to the kitchen, forcing myself to hold my body with less tension, to present an impression of resolution, calm, and control. With any luck, it would fool Antonio, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves discussion of antisemitism and forced conversion to Christianity.


	4. Chapter 4

Given that Antonio had appeared to accept my words at face value, and was at least earnestly pretending that Malkah had said nothing of secret Shabbat observance, the five of us were stuck playing our roles of genuine converts. Privately, I had serious misgivings about the extent to which Antonio had let the matter drop — knowing what he knew gave him even more of a hold over us than he had to begin with, and it was a source of great worry to me, wondering when he would decide to take advantage of that, and how. Malkah was the only one of us who seemed to have put the whole incident behind her, charging happily about the house, sneaking food from the kitchen, and chattering loudly at anyone who would listen. My other younger sisters were tense and withdrawn, flinching any time they encountered Antonio, and hiding out in our shared bedroom as much as possible. I wished I could do the same, but felt I needed to keep an eye on the other inhabitants of the house and do my best to gauge Antonio's intentions from his behaviour and interactions with me.

I was thwarted in this by his decision to work outside the house for most of Friday, and spent the day instead fretfully hovering around in the kitchen, trying to keep Malkah out from under Giovanni and Marina's feet. Saturday followed the same pattern — I heard him leaving the house early in the morning, and he was still gone when my sisters and I emerged to eat a rushed breakfast of bread and warm milk.

All five of us usually dreaded Sundays, with the requirement to make a public display of our converted state, and we didn't even have the usual consolation of Shabbat ritual and rest to fall back on: convincing Antonio that our conversion was genuine had been hard enough, and I certainly wasn't going to push our luck by lighting the candles in his own house. If nothing else, I wanted to keep memories of Malkah's revelation away from the forefront of his mind for as long as possible.

As a result of all this, by the time it was Saturday afternoon, I had spent nearly two days consumed with stress and anxiety, with Antonio's presence looming large in my mind, in spite of barely having seen him. Miriam, Chaya and Naomi were tense and fretful, and snapped at each other over minor problems. I had got into a silly argument with them in the doorway of our bedroom, trying to force them to come down to the kitchen and put on a display of nonchalance for Marina and Giovanni, as I was worried that the two servants would suspect something was wrong and either start asking questions, or talk about their suspicions to people outside Antonio's house. Naomi might have been persuaded to leave the room, but Miriam and Chaya were having nothing of it, and I wanted to tear out my hair with frustration. Chaya actually slammed the door in my face, leaving me red-faced and fuming in the hallway, braced against the wall as my injured ankle flared up with pain again.

Inevitably, this was the moment Antonio chose to return to the house from work. He rushed up the stairs towards me, his face creased with concern. I had to redirect him from leading me through the bedroom door ('to rest') to sitting on the stairs instead. I winced slightly as I settled the offending foot in front of me. Antonio sank down beside me on the stairs, stretching out his long legs and shrugging out of his outdoor cloak.

'I'd been wanting to talk to you,' he said.

'Well, here I am,' I replied, trying not to let my irritation with my sisters or fear at what Antonio might say bleed through into my words.

'It's about tomorrow,' he said. 'Tomorrow is Sunday.'

'I am well aware,' I said in response, wondering where this conversation was going.

'What with all the ... revelations and so on about religious observance, I never got around to asking you what you and your sisters do on Sunday — no, don't misunderstand me,' he continued, placing a hand reassuringly on my shoulder, 'I know you told me you all go to Mass on Sundays. I am not questioning your conversion. I realised, however, that I did not know _where_ you went to Mass, and whether you would prefer to go to that same church tomorrow, or elsewhere.'

'Where do _you_ go to Mass?' I asked him, curiosity winning out over my discomfort with having this particular conversation.

'St Mark's,' he replied.

Of course he would attend Mass at the cathedral, surrounded by all that gold and glory. Our long enmity and bitter past bargains had made it clear to me that for Antonio, religious observance was a matter of public perception and display. Spending time in his house, and the fact that he had saved my sisters and me from a drunken mob had displaced that observation of his character from my mind, but this revelation brought it all back. Someone like Antonio would, inevitably, hear Mass in the most visible way possible, in the same cathedral used by the wealthiest and most prominent Venetian citizens.

'We certainly don't go to Mass there!' I said. I didn't want to tell him that the thought of doing so made my flesh crawl. It would be like presenting our conversion up for public consumption.

'I didn't think so,' he said. 'I would have seen you there. I would have noticed.'

I put that piece of information away in my mind to consider later.

'We go to the little church near our house. It's quiet, it's small, and mostly only used by a handful of elderly women. After the trial, I ... I needed somewhere like that, private and unassuming.'

'Am I right in thinking that this is where you and your sisters would prefer to go tomorrow? And do you want to go alone, or with me?'

I was frustrated with this pattern — me feeling tense and afraid, braced for hurt and betrayal, him displaying an understanding that I had never witnessed previously in the many long years I had had to deal with him and his dreadful friends. It felt like yet another thing that could be weaponised against me — against my sisters — at a moment's notice. With him being so outwardly calm and perceptive, it made any anger on my part look like petty ingratitude. I didn't want to admit to him that the thought of going anywhere near my house made my mouth dry with fear, and that having him with us at the church would help to combat that. I tried to find a way to frame this without making it seem like an admission of dependence.

'If you can forego St Mark's for one week — if you can condescend to go somewhere less gilded and visible — you are of course welcome to come with us. I do not want to go with you to St Mark's. Everyone would see us — see me. It would look like you were parading us and our conversion like some kind of trophy. It would be unbearable.'

He didn't react to my needling about ostentation and display, simply nodded, and rose from his position on the stairs, holding out a hand to help me stand.

'I will go with you, if you and your sisters have no objections.'

And the two of us made our way — unsteadily, in my case — down the stairs, and out into the courtyard, to sit contemplatively in the dwindling light of the Saturday afternoon sun.

*

I was not in the habit of dressing for the occasion of Mass — my attitude to the intolerable situation into which my sisters and I had been forced was to follow to the letter the promise we had made upon converting with an outward expression of neutral compliance, doing nothing beyond the things we had pledged to do, and retaining everything of our old life and religion that could be retained without breaking that coerced promise of our forced conversion. We had promised to fulfill the requirements of typical Christian observance. We had said nothing about making those observances feel important, precious or valuable by way of more opulent clothing: I wore my everyday working garments, and my sisters did the same. Antonio, of course, had no such qualms, and was even more richly dressed than usual. My former line of work had given me a keen eye for detail, and I suspected that if I allowed myself, I would be able to catalogue every item of his clothing in terms of its origin, the merchant or trader from whom he had bought it, and its market price at the time of purchase. I wrenched my mind away from such irrelevant musings to concentrate on my sisters, who were still sullen from the following day's argument, and, in the case of Miriam, disgruntled that I had asked Antonio to accompany us to Mass.

It was quite a long walk from his house to our former quarters, and Miriam had decided to be as unhelpful as possible, carrying Malkah and leading Naomi by the hand in order to avoid supporting me as I laboured across the cobblestones on my injured ankle. That left me, once again, clinging to Antonio's arm as a crutch, much to my irritation. As we left his neighbourhood and turned towards the more familiar lanes and canals around our old home, I was disturbed and irritated to realise that, yet again, my sense of fear and apprehension had returned. Antonio must have noticed, as my grip on his arm became tighter, my fingernails digging into the rich fabric, and he began asking a stream of innocuous questions about the locale — did we know any of our neighbours, how frequently were the market stalls in the square nearby, could I normally buy all that I needed from the market, and so on. It did the trick: my breathing steadied, the tension left my shoulders, and we walked on.

The church was, as always, near empty. I had never bothered to find out where most of my neighbours heard Mass — if they did so at all — as it had been such a relief to discover a place where the priest was incurious and unambitious, and the parishioners were elderly, and more interested in chatting with each other than wondering about the group of five strange sisters who had suddenly appeared in their midst. Miriam, Chaya, Naomi and Malkah had already made their way to our usual spot — a pew in the middle of the church, partially obscured by an awkwardly placed pillar — and barely glanced up when Antonio and I made our appearance. I thought at first to ask him to sit elsewhere — and then dismissed the idea, as there was no way to do so without sounding both rude and strange. Inwardly I cursed my own weakness, the lingering panic and anxiety I felt at the prospect of walking out the door of Antonio's house alone that compelled me to demand his company on every such occasion.

I let the service wash over me. I did not understand Latin, and having Christianity forced humiliatingly upon me against me will had certainly not encouraged me to learn the language. In the early days after our conversion, I had attended Mass with a sense of frantic, furious, fearful observation, carefully watching everyone else in the church to make sure I was kneeling, standing, speaking and moving at the right moments, terrified that one mistake would render me and my sisters painfully visible. But after so many long months my body remembered the motions. I was aware there were points in the service at which I was supposed to be sending my prayers towards the Christian God, but here I had always remained firm: my mind, and my prayers remained my own, and no conversion was going to compel them. The outward appearance of prayer was enough — the surface of things.

Antonio seemed content enough, even if this tiny church was no St Mark's and his luxurious Sunday clothing was wasted on the local bevy of elderly women and my four sullen sisters. Malkah, who always found it difficult to sit still throughout the entire Mass, roamed back and forth along our pew, before settling at last in my lap, gazing upwards at the rather inexpertly made frescoes on the ceiling.

Eventually, the part of the service I most disliked arrived: confession. I loathed and dreaded this particular piece of Christian observance, and of all the iniquities I was forced to endure since converting, this was the most intolerable. The compulsion to humbly beg forgiveness from someone I didn't respect made me seethe with inward rage, and the Christian form of atonement — ritualistic prayer without any attempt to apologise to the actual wronged party — seemed ridiculously inadequate to me, more a chance to give the priest secrets by which to control the confessing parishioner, and to make the parishioner feel better, rather than making genuine amends. Of course people who believed this would see moral goodness as more a matter of outward perception and display, rather than actions, and their effects.

With some effort, I wrenched my mind back from wandering down bitter theological paths, and gestured my sisters towards the confessional. Miriam sighed, and made her way forward, doing as much as possible to make her irritated reluctance plain to any observer — which of course caused Chaya and Naomi to follow suit. I had never questioned what my sisters actually said to the priest in these moments — once I had satisfied myself, in the early days after our conversion, that they knew what would happen during confession and were able to respond with the appearance of rote learning, I let them say what they liked, trusting that they were sensible enough not to confess anything genuinely incriminating.

For my own confession, I normally cycled through a collection of genuine 'sins,' mentally setting aside whether I felt they were worthy of true contrition. This week I would have little difficulty: I had fought with my sisters, I had told lies by omission, I had been rude and hostile in a house where I was a guest. That ought to provide sufficient confessional material. I had a moment of wishing wildly to confess the thing that was truly burdening me: that my selfish fear of being back in my own house, and the irrational terror I felt about being attacked by another violent mob had caused me to put my sisters in danger, at the mercy of a man who had done terrible harm and wrong to us. It weighed on my mind like a slow poison, and I — never in the habit of trusting anyone with my inner thoughts — felt disgusted with myself for my own weakness, and for this dreadful trap of my own making. There was no chance of the priest hearing any of that, however. I was no fool.

Antonio nudged me forward. In my anxious reverie I had missed the fact that my sisters, and the cluster of old women had all made their confessions, and it was my turn. I sighed, and limped forward into the confessional, kneeling and saying whatever was required of me in a low murmur, barely taking in the priest's responses, before joining my sisters out on the steps outside the church. It was a cold day, and I felt a surge of irritation at Antonio, whose confession seemed to drag on for hours (of course he would take his time at it, wanting to put on a worthy display for the priest, his desire to be admired by everyone he met extending even to insignificant Venetian parish priests), leaving my sisters and me to freeze on the church steps.

Finally, after Malkah had begun to grizzle with impatience, Antonio joined us. I risked a look at his face — in my experience, keeping a watchful eye on the people around me was necessary to maintain vigilance against the ever-present threat of sudden violence — which was pensive and unreadable, as if he were deep in thought. Whatever the priest had said to him appeared to have sparked reflection. At least someone had got something out of Mass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter depicts the effects of forced conversion, including Jewish characters being forced to participate in Christian religious services.


	5. Chapter 5

It took exactly half an hour — the duration of our slow walk back to Antonio's house — for the tense truce that had sprung up in the wake of Malkah's revelations to finally break. I think I was worn out from the strain of being alone with my own troubling thoughts, and my sisters' ongoing hostility certainly hadn't helped. Church always put me in a foul mood, but in Antonio's presence I was denied the option of fuming and raging behind closed doors at the injustice of it all. Miriam and I were resentfully laying the table for the midday meal — probably with more clattering of crockery than was strictly necessary — when Naomi, perhaps as an attempt to cut through the tension in the room, innocently asked Antonio where Marina and Giovanni were.

'Oh, I always give them a break from work on Sundays,' he said. 'They have a married daughter living over in the glassblowers' quarter with her husband and children, and I think they normally go over and visit each week. I'm certainly able to fend for myself for one day a week — or visit one of my friends if I want a more elaborately cooked meal.'

'And of course _saintly_ Antonio never wastes an opportunity to parade his generosity before the eyes of the adoring world! Even when it comes to letting servants have a holiday from service you must be seen to be more liberal than everyone else,' I muttered angrily.

'What is wrong with you?' he asked. 'Must everything I say or do be viewed in the most unfavourable light? I've never met someone who took every opportunity to leap to the worst faith conclusions as swiftly as you!'

Something in me just snapped. 'It's so _easy_ to be generous when you're wealthy and powerful!' I fumed. 'Of course someone like you would _never_ judge another's actions in bad faith — kindness and trust is easy when everyone you deal with is cowed by your riches and needs your business and patronage in some way! Even when you're in the wrong, the world tells you you're in the right, and in the rare occasions when you must sully yourself by hurting others, your friends, clients and even the very law of this city rushes to reassure you that actually your hurt was compassionate mercy — and anyway, the people you hurt were just greedy, grasping Jews who deserved everything that was done to them!'

Antonio looked like I had just slapped him.

'It's nice to know what you really think of me!' he said, in angry tones. 'I have been nothing if not patient with you — I don't know how you think I expected my week to turn out, but I certainly didn't expect to spend it nursing _you_ back to health. The last time I saw you, you wanted to cut my heart out! I've responded to your insults with calmness, the rather flimsy nature of your conversion with an attempt to listen and understand, and your appearance on my doorstop with hospitality. And you, in turn, have been guarded, angry, and hostile!'

'What a disgrace that I not show the man who — let's not forget — hurt and humiliated me, and tormented my father for years, with anything but deferential gratitude. Oh, Antonio, I'm so _grateful_ to you for wriggling out of a perfectly legitimate deal with legal sophistry, for forcing me and my sisters out of our home and community and into such impoverishment that we didn't even have our meagre wealth to protect us from the unpredictable cruelties of the hostile Venetian mob! You Christians are all the same — law-abiding compliance is not enough, you must have flattery and fawning gratitude!'

Once I'd started, I couldn't stop: the angry words poured out of me. Every injustice, every petty frustration I'd endured since before my conversion, I flung the lot at Antonio, even if he had not been the cause in every instance. He gave as good as he got — shouting back at me across the table until he was red in the face. I was so enraged that I couldn't take in his actual words, and my anger outweighed my usual fear at looking a potential tormenter in the eyes. I think at one point I was even brandishing plates and loaves of bread and threatening to hurl them across the room, although even in my state of fury I was able to retain some awareness that this would have been a terrible idea. I contented myself instead with banging the table until my wrists sang with agony, and calling Antonio a hypocrite who had enriched himself on stolen wealth. He opened his mouth — no doubt to call me something much worse — when Miriam somehow managed to clamber on top of the table and stand in between the pair of us.

'While the two of you were carrying on like a pair of mad hens,' she announced, in ringing tones, 'I don't think you noticed that Naomi has vanished.'

The anger fled from my body, to be replaced with an icy fear that settled in the pit of my stomach.

'I've already checked the courtyard,' Miriam said, raising a hand to stop what would have been my first question, 'and Chaya has been through all the rooms upstairs. Naomi might have got into one of the storerooms, but I somehow doubt it. You _know_ how sensitive she is, Esther — she's the family peacemaker — this ridiculous fight with Antonio has frightened her so much that she's run away!'

I dropped into one of the benches, my head falling into my hands.

'And you!' Miriam turned on Antonio, her hands on her hips. 'You are just as much to blame as Esther! I may not be as watchful and observant as my older sister, but I've seen enough of you to get a pretty good understanding of your character. I think you deliberately engineer situations so that you'll always seem to be the most patient and reasonable person in the room, just so that you can feel superior when others react with explosions of emotion. It's not the same as Esther's constant angry needling, but it provokes the same response!'

I was astonished to see Antonio look visibly chastened at Miriam's words.

'Now,' she said, clambering down from the table and turning to face first one of us, and then the other, 'are you both going to put aside this argument for the moment and help me find my sister?'

I answered first.

'I'm sorry, Miriam. You are right, of course — and of course we will help. Indeed, we will be the ones to go outside and look for Naomi — someone needs to stay here with Malkah, and I'd prefer it not just to be Chaya on her own. In any case, Naomi might return to the house, and it would help if more than one person is here to greet her if that's the case, so that someone can leave the house and find me and Antonio, to tell us that we can cease our search. Unless you have a better idea?' I turned to Antonio.

'No,' he said, slowly. 'That seems the most sensible approach, although I'm not sure you should be roaming around the city on your injured ankle, Esther.'

'Let me worry about that,' I said.

The two of us made our way through the front door.

*

I was still shaking with fury at Antonio, and I was pretty sure he was very angry at me, but in that moment my fear overrode all else — even the pain in my ankle seemed very far away. I was trying to think where Naomi might have gone. Antonio's house was in a dead end, but it was more likely that my sister had slipped out the back way through the canals, which were like a maze. I felt Antonio's hand on my wrist.

'Would she have gone back to your old house?' he asked.

'It's on my list of places to try,' I said, 'but I don't think it's likely. We can go there if we haven't found her anywhere else.''

'And how well did she know the city? What I'm trying to get at is would she be more likely to move purposefully towards somewhere familiar, or would she just travel at random along whatever felt like the easiest route?'

'All my sisters apart from Malkah know Venice well. We always had to be certain that we could escape quickly via a variety of routes,' I told Antonio, sullenly. His grip tightened on my wrist slightly at that, but he otherwise made no reaction.

I told him my theory about Naomi getting out of the house through the back entrance via the canals, so we retreated in that direction and began following the canal deeper into the city. There was no sign of my sister, and no one we asked had any recollection of a young red-headed girl passing. I ground my teeth, and tried to rein in my increasing panic.

We moved from place to place: from the square with the fountains which had always been Naomi's particular favourite, to a shop which sold sugared almonds, and from a bridge where my sisters and I used to watch the canal traffic go by to the market square we only visited to buy particular delicacies on special occasions. It being Sunday, none of the shops or market stalls were open, and I couldn't imagine they would have held any appeal to Naomi, but I had to at least try every possibility.

In a fit of desperation, Antonio and I even went back to the church where he and my sisters had attended Mass earlier in the day, but it was empty and silent. By this point, I was almost crying with the pain of keeping up with Antonio's long-legged strides on my injured ankle, but my worries about Naomi kept me from asking him to slow down. I hobbled after him as he made his way from the church to our old residence. The square and entrance outside the building were deserted, and, when I tried the front door, the bar which my sisters had placed there more than a week ago still stood. I let Antonio go in through the back window on his own, justifying this by claiming I would search further around the building, but he returned soon after, saying the place was empty.

I slumped in a hopeless heap against the back wall of the house. We had been walking through the city for close to two hours at this point, and it was as if Naomi had vanished. How far could one small girl have got? My mind had started to stray in catastrophic directions, imagining violent, angry mobs, Naomi blundering into the middle of a knife fight of drunk young men, or being kidnapped and smuggled out of the city via the docks.

'Esther,' said Antonio, in a tone of voice that suggested he was expecting an angry reaction from me, 'I have one final suggestion, but I do not know how realistic it is. You will know better than I whether it makes sense for Naomi.'

'Tell me!' I said, beating my fists against the wall in frustration. 'At this point I could be persuaded to get on a merchant ship across the Mediterranean if it seemed likely I would find my sister that way.'

'From the way you speak,' he said, again as if bracing for verbal fireworks, 'and from the little unintentional hints you have let slip in your time in my house, it seems that you really regret no longer being able to live in the ghetto surrounded by other Jewish people. That you feel unsafe and uneasy outside in the Christian areas of the city. Is this true for your sisters as well? Might Naomi have fled back to the ghetto, seeking the familiarity of her former home and neighbours there?'

'How very perceptive of you,' I replied waspishly. 'You have observed that we dislike living among neighbours who hound us through the street pursued by a baying mob — not that being in the ghetto completely shielded us from that risk. But yes, what you are suggesting is not a terrible idea, and I can't think where else Naomi could have gone, unless she's already returned to your house and our entire afternoon has been wasted pointlessly roaming across half of Venice.'

'Does that mean you agree we should search the ghetto?' he asked.

'Yes, although don't expect that anyone there will be happy to see us,' I replied, dragging myself into a standing position with great difficulty.

We walked on.

*

My heart constricted at the sight of my former home neighbourhood. I wished fervently that the events of the past six months hadn't happened, that I was simply returning home after some work-related foray into Christian Venice, to the uncomplicated warmth and relative safety of my sisters, and our old house. Bringing Antonio with me into this space just added insult to injury, tainting memories of happier old times with the presence of the man who had caused them to end.

'It's this way,' I said, tugging at Antonio's sleeve as I guided him towards one of the narrower side streets.

No one seemed to be about, or if they were, they had retreated inside. It was hard to tell if that was due to our presence, or because of some other perceived threat. Or maybe they simply didn't like the look of the weather. In any case, the place was deserted, although I sensed movement within many of the houses we passed. I wondered if any of my former neighbours recognised Antonio. They would certainly recognise me.

We moved deeper through the tangle of streets. Every so often, the smell of cooking would waft out through a window, or a semi-open door, a painful reminder of the food of my childhood. Far worse was the sense of being assailed by memories: of the fountain where I would accompany my mother to gather water and gossip, or the place where Miriam used to sit with her friends, and the wall that Chaya and Naomi would climb, daring the rowdy small boys of the neighbourhood to follow. I hadn't been back to the ghetto since we left after our conversion — what would have been the point? — and I felt as if the grief I had refused to allow on that occasion was pouring over me like a flood wave.

And then we turned onto my old street, and Naomi was there, curled up in front of our old house. I tried to run forwards, but that was the point at which my ankle decided to give up on me, and instead I fell with a rush of pain in an undignified heap on the street. Antonio helped me to stand, and I limped towards my younger sister, clutching at his arm.

Naomi looked at us fearfully, and her face was stained with tears. 'I just wanted to go home,' she whispered, and flung herself at the pair of us, wrapping her arms around both me and Antonio. After a moment's shock, we both hugged her back. I could feel her trembling between us.

'I'm so sorry, little one,' I said, kissing the top of her head. 'I'm so sorry for fighting and frightening you.' She mumbled something incoherent into my arm, still shaking. 

'I'm sorry too,' said Antonio, much to my shock. 'It can't be easy for you, Naomi — you've had to leave your home so many times that you begin to feel that you don't have a home at all.'

'I thought you were going to make us leave,' she said, looking up at Antonio with big eyes that broke my heart.

'Any decision to leave will only be made by you, and your sisters,' he said. 'I know it is not for me to decide if my house is your home, but it is ... it is your refuge, as long as you want it to be. I'm sorry if fighting with Esther made you feel that that wasn't the case.'

'Oh,' said Naomi, in much more cheerful tones, 'Esther fights with everyone all the time. It wouldn't be home without Esther arguing with someone.'

'Is that so?' said Antonio, grinning at me as I fumed at my sister in outrage.

'Then again,' said Naomi, as we began to make our way out, 'she did always warn us that it was a very bad idea to fight with Christians.'

'I think our lives over the past six months have demonstrated precisely why that is a profoundly terrible idea, don't you, Naomi?' I said, as we left the ghetto, and began the long walk home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter discusses past antisemitic abuse experienced by a character.


	6. Chapter 6

My sisters gave me two days before they forced a decision on me. I woke up in our shared room to find them all perched on the bed next to me, dressed, wide awake, with expressions ranging from determined to expectant. Miriam was the first to speak.

'Esther,' she said, 'we have been patient with you — letting your various wounds heal, letting you sift through your own thoughts about what happened with the mob, and indeed about what has happened to us these past months — and we have been patiently living here, in this strange situation in Antonio's house, and refrained from saying anything. But we've been here for more than a week now, and we feel that is time enough for you to say what you want to happen next.'

'You all planned your attack in advance, didn't you?' I asked. 'Waiting to catch me when I had just woken up and wasn't in any state to organise my thoughts.'

'We had to ask you at a time when all five of us were alone,' said Naomi, reasonably.

'Yes,' said Chaya. 'We _all_ need to agree on what's going to happen before anyone talks to Antonio.'

'And I suppose all four of you already agree?' I asked in irritated tones.

'Esther,' said Miriam, 'there have been far too many instances where you have made decisions without consulting us first, and dragged all four of us with you into whatever terrible consequences resulted.'

'You were _children_ when I agreed to that loan to Antonio,' I muttered. 'You're all children still!'

'Just listen to us, please?' said Naomi.

'I suppose you're going to say that we need to leave immediately,' I said, sleepily rubbing at my eyes.

'Will you stop leaping to conclusions?' said Miriam. 'None of us have said anything of the sort, and what we feel is quite the opposite. We think you should seriously consider telling Antonio that we want to stay here indefinitely.'

Her words left me speechless with shock. With the exception of Malkah, none of my four sisters had seemed particularly comfortable in Antonio's house — not that I could blame them. _I_ wasn't comfortable in Antonio's house.

'There is a reason for this,' said Chaya, picking up the thread. 'Even though you've tried to shield us from things, Miriam and I know just how dire our circumstances have become. Since the trial, you haven't been able to work, and most of the savings you had have gone into paying the rent on our new house. We've watched you count the coins, go without food, or stretch things until they're fully used up to try to save meagre amounts of money. We have no relations left in Venice, and we can't ask for community support because we are supposedly no longer Jewish. I am pretty sure you wouldn't want to ask the Church for charity.

'Being here — living here — is like an opportunity that fell from the sky into our laps. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it's an opportunity that you tripped and fell into through an open doorway. We want to stay.'

'Are you seriously suggesting you feel safe here? With Antonio? Do none of you remember what he has done? Not just to me personally, but the things he has said about Jewish people, and done, and encouraged others to do to our former community?' I was stunned at what they were suggesting.

'Of course I know what he has done,' said Miriam. 'I feel a constant simmering sense of anger every time I look at him, and then I push that anger down, and sit there being polite and pleasant to him across the table at breakfast! But — and this is hard to explain — it's anger, and not fear. Apart from those two moments, when Malkah nearly gave us all away, and when Naomi went missing, I have not felt a single scrap of fear since we fell through that solid, heavy door downstairs. Do you know what a relief that is? Before that, I was afraid every day — afraid of our poverty, afraid of the violence of a mob, afraid that your pride and rage at the world would see us condemned to some terrible future catastrophe!'

'Oh, Miriam,' I said, pulling her into a tight hug in my arms, 'I had no idea that you'd been so afraid. Every decision I've made since our father died was made to try and ensure your safety — the safety of all four of you — and I tried so hard to shield you from how frightened I am myself all the time.'

'Everyone's afraid, it seems,' said Chaya, with a grimace.

'I'm not afraid!' said Malkah. 'I like it here! There's lots of food, and Marina gives me sweets every time I go into the kitchen.'

'Would that everyone's requirements for happiness were as uncomplicated as Malkah's,' I said, ruefully. 'What about you, Naomi? You've been fairly quiet — are you truly comfortable here? Two days ago you were running away because Antonio and I were fighting.'

'The pair of you are completely ridiculous,' said Chaya. 'It's as if you deliberately say things to provoke each other.'

'I am perfectly fine living here,' said Naomi, continuing as if Chaya had not interjected. 'I had a long talk with Antonio —' at this, Miriam and I turned to each other with equally baffled expressions '— and he has promised to never argue with Esther again while the five of us are living in his house. So that's settled.'

She sat back against the wall, looking satisfied.

'This is something of an ambush,' I said. 'I feel as if you've been whispering behind my back for days and made up your minds without any need for my input.'

'What a strange and new experience for you, to have people make decisions on your behalf,' said Chaya. 'And yes, I also think it would be better to stay here.'

'I won't deny that there are lot of things to recommend remaining here,' I said. 'You've already informed me of most of the benefits. I want you all to think about the host of new problems that our remaining here will cause. The first, and most obvious one: the rather flimsy nature of our "conversion". It's possible to hide these things over one week with an insincere attendance at Mass and a few pretty words about holding onto "old traditions" for the sake of familiarity. It is not possible to hide forever the fact that we haven't eaten any meat at Antonio's table for fear it might be pork. And if we stay here, we are not even going to manage the little secret kinds of observance we've been keeping in the past six months. Unless we explain everything to Antonio — _Antonio_, who forced our conversion in the first place!

'The second problem goes beyond religion. Eventually, someone other than Marina and Giovanni is going to notice that Antonio — a wealthy and respected member of the merchant elite, who usually has a huge pack of friends surrounding him — has five young women and girls living in his house. We are not his relatives, nor are we his servants. What do you think people will say — say of me — when this becomes common knowledge? The gossips of this city will go into raptures if they realise that the particular young woman living in his house is me.

'And the final flaw in your decision is Antonio himself. You have decided everything without knowing whether he'll even allow it. It's expensive to feed five extra people, especially if some of them are growing children. Already he has spent time accompanying me across the city on errands and attempts to rescue missing sisters. We are a complication in his life — are you even sure he'll be happy for that to continue?'

'Oh Esther,' said Naomi, 'Antonio already said to me when you and he found me in the ghetto on Sunday that his house was our refuge, as long as we wanted it to be. You don't need to worry about that.'

'I think he just wants someone around to argue with,' said Chaya.

'As to what he has done to us — what he has taken from us,' said Miriam, 'don't think for a minute that I have forgotten. There is almost nothing he could do that would atone for that. But that's why it gives me such satisfaction to remain here. He might have taken our livelihood from us — but with us under his roof, he has to use that stolen wealth to feed and house us!'

'What of the biggest problem?' I asked.

'Hiding our insincere conversion from him?' said Miriam. 'That's the most difficult and dangerous one. The four of us discussed this, and it's our feeling that it can be hidden, up until we reach the point at which it will no longer be a problem.'

'You believe there will be such a point?' I was skeptical. 'More urgently, you believe all of us — even Malkah — would be able to keep up a pretense like that for so long?'

'Anything Malkah says can be explained away with some nonsense about keeping things cozy and familiar for a bewildered four-year-old,' said Miriam. 'As to the rest, I'm not sure. But I know you, and I trust you to have at least five different plans of escape in your mind at any given time, so I know that if the truth of our "conversion" ever became apparent, you would be able to get us away from danger in time.'

Chaya and Naomi nodded earnestly. Malkah bounced up and down on the bed.

'Well, it's fair to say that we have ended up in a lot of intolerable situations due to decisions made by me,' I said at last. 'We might as well try letting the rest of you make decisions for a change. I'll speak to Antonio after breakfast.'

*

I realised as we descended the stairs for the morning meal that we had not agreed on a satisfactory solution to the other problem I'd identified — the scandal of the five of us living under Antonio's roof as neither his relatives nor his servants. I turned the problem over and over in my mind, hoping that some way around it would occur to me while we were eating.

My sisters were more relaxed than I had ever observed them being in the time we'd been living with Antonio, as if a weight had been lifted from their shoulders now that they'd convinced me of the sense of their preferred plan of action. They ate their morning meal with relish, chatting with each other, occasionally roping Marina or Giovanni into their conversation, and making plans for the day. The food, as always, smelt delicious, but I was too anxious to eat, crumbling my piece of warm bread in my hands, worrying about finding the right words.

Antonio had not always joined us for meals in his house — on several days he had left before we'd even woken up — but today he was there, arriving late, looking distracted as he gathered a great pile of bread and fruit on his plate. I let him get on with it — it would be much easier to ask him for a huge and mortifying favour once his stomach was full, I felt. As he stood up to leave, I reached for his sleeve, pulling him back down to the bench beside me.

'Are you in a terrible rush this morning?' I asked.

'Not really,' he replied. 'I have to see someone down at the docks at noon, but I have no appointments before that, and everything else can wait. Did you want to speak to me about something?'

'Yes, but ... but could we speak in private?' My heart hammered painfully in my chest. While I could see the sense in my sisters' plan, I was not convinced of my own ability to persuade Antonio. I was not someone who had much luck using words persuasively, least of all with him.

'We can go out in the courtyard. It's a warm, sunny morning — take your cup outside with you. We'll finish up the meal there.'

And with a final, curious glance at my sisters — Chaya and Naomi were trying and failing to avoid staring at me with expectant eyes — he scooped up another plateful of bread, and swept from the room, leaving me to stumble awkwardly in his wake. Outside, the sun was blinding, and he had already dragged two stools into the warmest corner of the courtyard, and placed the plate of food between them.

'Have you even eaten?' he asked, as I sank down into the stool next to him, trying not to spill my drink.

I took a piece of bread, mainly to give me something to look at in my hands, and tried to force down a mouthful. As I chewed the bread slowly, I attempted to find the right way to frame what I was about to ask. No matter what Miriam had said about using this as an opportunity to live off what had once been our own money, the whole thing felt like placing ourselves deliberately, and perpetually, in Antonio's debt.

'So,' he said, 'what is it you wanted to talk about that couldn't be discussed in the kitchen?'

I sighed. 'Naomi seems to think that you have offered up your house for us to stay forever, as a place of refuge,' I began.

'I did say to you both, on Sunday, when we had to retrieve Naomi from the ghetto, that this was the case. Have I given you or your sisters any reason to doubt my word?'

I refrained from the obvious sarcastic or furious response about unpaid loans and broken contracts, and left this question unanswered.

'My sisters and I have been talking,' I continued, 'and they have made it clear that they do not want things to continue in this strange kind of indeterminate way, where you do not ask us when we're planning to leave, and we don't ask how long we can stay. The uncertainty is bad for us all.

'I assume you wish you'd never opened your door to us that night. Your quiet house is now filled with five loud sisters, and we must be eating our way steadily through all your food stores. I wasn't thinking of anything other than escape when we fled in desperation from the mob — certainly not that someone who hates me would be forced to treat me as his guest.'

'You always do this,' Antonio said. 'You hide behind your sisters and pretend you're just giving their requests voice, and put words in my mouth and thoughts in my head. You clearly want to ask me something — ask it as yourself. For yourself.'

'Well, two can play at that,' I replied, struggling to keep the rush of anger from my voice. '_You_ always seem to want to force me into situations where I make myself vulnerable and reveal my private thoughts. But very well — here they are.

'I have experienced torment and violence from mobs before, and my whole life has taught me to go about my business with one eye over my shoulder, braced for shouted insults and slaps at best, or incredible violence at worst. I've already told you that I was not foolish enough to think that this would stop once I ceased being a Jewish moneylender in the eyes of this city. As I say, the risk of being turned on by otherwise ordinary people in the street for no apparent reason has been with me all my life — I cannot remember a time when this was not so. And therefore I can't explain why this particular mob, this particular violence affected me so badly. It's not even the worst pain that's been inflicted on me by a pack of howling drunks.'

I could see Antonio absorbing this information, remembering the knife wounds, my face and ribs covered with bruises, my difficulties walking, and thinking, _worse pain than that?_

'When I was seven years old, a debtor of my father's showed up at our house with a horde of his male relatives, and he slammed a door on my hand to indicate his displeasure at having to fulfill the terms of his loan. They then proceeded to kick me and stamp on my body with heavy boots. My father let him have an extension on the repayments,' I said, expressionlessly.

'But let's bring things back to the present day. I was saying that the mob that chased us across the city to your house unsettled me more than any other. I'm afraid of being outside. When I see loud groups of men it makes me flinch. The thought of letting my sisters out of your door is intolerable. The thought of returning to our old dwelling fills me with horror. I had hoped that these feelings would diminish, but they're only getting worse. I never felt safe in Venice, but I used to be able to bury that feeling and go about my day. Now the only thing that gets me out that front door is the knowledge that you'll be walking beside me.'

This last was absolutely humiliating to admit. I felt wretched, and curled in on myself, my head hanging, my eyes cast down. The bread lay uneaten in my hands. Antonio placed a hesitant hand on my shoulder.

'Might I suggest that the reason you were particularly affected by that mob is that they threatened not just you, but your sisters?' he asked.

'People have threatened Miriam before,' I replied, wanting to dismiss what he said.

'But Naomi, Malkah? Outside, in front of witnesses, in broad daylight in the street?'

'The last time someone threatened Malkah like that, it ended with us becoming Christians, and half my wealth — my shield — in someone else's hands, and the whole thing called justice, and mercy!' I said, shrugging Antonio's comforting hand from my shoulder.

He flinched back as if he'd been burned. 'I do not think my comfort and sympathy for that particular thing would be welcomed by you, so I will say instead that I am sorry our conversation now has headed — at my unintentional prompting — to that subject. Do you want to return to the thing you are trying to ask of me?'

'Yes,' I said, with effort. 'I am trying to explain why I am going to ask this next question. I am trying to explain why these past ten days have surprised even me, why I would even dream of asking such a thing. I am trying to make you understand that I have always been afraid, always braced for the next blow, the next reminder that though I was born in Venice, though my father was born in Venice, I would always be thought of as an outsider, worthy of hostility and suspicion — but the fear I feel now is so overwhelming that I would prefer to remain in the house of my worst enemy, and beg him for ongoing shelter, beg him to walk by my side every time I might need to leave these four walls. I'm so frightened that it floods my thoughts, and poisons any joy I might feel at seeing my sisters relaxed and cheerful, because I'm so worried that their current pleasant situation of safety might change at any moment. I'm so frightened that I'm less afraid of the prospect of sitting here beside you, eating your bread, and telling you exactly why I am so full of fear. And I'm most frightened of all that I have now explained all this to you, and now I must ask you if the five of us can remain here, living with you, that in time I might no longer feel this kind of fear. Antonio, can we stay?'

'I said to Naomi the other day that she should view my house as a refuge, and I meant it. I meant it for you as well — for all five of you. It has been — I don't want to say educational; I'm a grown man and it shouldn't have taken five terrified sisters to tumble through my doorway for me to learn the things I have learnt — but suffice it to say that I have had my eyes opened more these past ten days than the preceding ten years. I feel awed that you have trusted me to tell me even this much — so many painful things — and I know what it will have cost you to do so, and to ask if you might stay. I will repeat what I said to Naomi: it is not for me to decide if my house is your home, but it is your refuge, for as long as you would like. If as long as you like is forever, that is fine with me.'

I had been watching his hands while he talked, but I risked a careful look at his face. He was looking at me, and his eyes — which I normally avoided — were gentle.

'You must say if you mind, if it is an imposition,' I said, hating, as always, to feel as if I were in Antonio's debt.

'It's not an imposition,' he said. 'I've lived alone since my parents died, apart from Marina and Giovanni. Most of my friends live outside the city these days. I didn't even realise that the house felt empty, until you and your sisters arrived to fill it up.'

The reminder of his friends caused all my worries about remaining in his house to return.

'Antonio,' I said, anxiously, 'how are we going to explain our presence here to your friends? Your friends, who, I should remind you, I last saw in a courtroom, cheering my downfall. And what about everyone else in this city — Venice is a gossipy place, and our ... entanglement was so public, so dramatic. Can you imagine what people will say when they discover we're living with you? I'm astonished that no one has noticed the pair of us travelling around the city together by now — what can we possibly say to explain it?'

'Do we even need to explain it?' he asked. 'You say Venice is gossipy, and loves a convoluted drama, and that's true — but that also means our entanglement, as you call it, is old news. People have other things to gossip about now.'

'I think you have a staggeringly naive understanding of the character of your fellow Venetians,' I said, 'and I also think you are blinded by your own position of comfortable wealth and esteem. It is I who will be viewed poorly by the gossips — a young woman, living under the roof of a man who is neither her relative nor employer, and, worse, bringing all her younger sisters into that disreputable situation as well! Then again, it would be hard for me to be held in less esteem than I am already in the eyes of most Venetians: it's not as if I have any reputation left to uphold!'

'You are right,' he said. 'You are right, and I'm sorry. I can't see any way out of this bind: all I can say is that any gossip will not be added to by me, and if I hear it I will try to set the gossips right. As to my friends, I cannot think what to tell them. They would not believe me if I told them you were my guest. Two weeks ago, _I_ would not have believed it. It's less than ideal, but can I simply ask that we leave the problem of my friends aside, until it becomes a pressing concern?'

'I don't really know what else to do,' I admitted. 'I suppose I've been living moment to moment for so long that putting aside yet one more problem to deal with only when it's truly urgent won't make all that much of a difference. I already opened myself up to whatever additional mud this city saw fit to fling at me the minute I allowed you to close that door behind us.'

'You make the whole thing sound so bleak,' Antonio said. 

'I'm sorry that the last six months — that the eighteen years of my life — have not left me with a better opinion of human nature,' I said, without any real venom in my voice. 'Now, let's go and tell my sisters the good news.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes a mention of past antisemitic violence experienced by a character.


	7. Chapter 7

Things happened very quickly after that. It seemed there was a never-ending list of tasks to complete in order to change our residence in Antonio's house from temporary to permanent. I was able to delegate some things to my younger sisters, but, inevitably, the most difficult and complicated activities fell to me.

Most urgent of all was the need to cease paying to rent a house the five of us were never going to live in again, and clear out any of our meagre handful of belongings that remained there. I didn't want to do this — it would mean leaving Antonio's house, and the landlord was a deeply unpleasant man who was always infuriating to deal with. But holding onto the house essentially meant throwing away money I couldn't spare, so I steeled myself, and took Miriam and Antonio with me for moral support.

The landlord, a man in his middle years named Marco, who always gave the impression of being interrupted from some more important task, met us in another of the houses he owned, looking curiously at Antonio, whom I was surprised he didn't recognise. I was anticipating a fight, but tried to begin in as civil a tone as I could manage.

'We would like to end our lease,' I said.

'Is there something wrong with the house?' Marco demanded. 'You told me you wanted to stay there until the end of the year. I gave that house to you ahead of other, more desirable renters, because you said you would be there longer and I would be certain of your rent for at least a year.'

'There's nothing wrong with the house,' I said, 'and I am certain you will be able to find new tenants by the end of the week — there's no end of people crowding into this city, wanting a place to live.'

Marco gestured around the room, a long-suffering expression on his face.

'The tenants here left last week — and they're my second house to end their lease this past fortnight! How am I supposed to earn a living if all my tenants leave at once?'

'How is that my problem?' I asked, starting to get exasperated.

'I was doing you a big favour, letting you and your sisters live there,' said Marco, his face growing red with anger. 'I didn't have to rent to you — a bunch of greedy, grasping Jews, so duplicitous that even the ghetto didn't want you any more — and I only agreed to it because _you_ agreed to commit to paying me a year's rent. That was a favour, far more than you deserved!'

'It wasn't a favour! It was commerce: you owned a house, and I paid you to live there. We made an agreement, and I kept to its terms. You are a landlord, I am your tenant, and I paid you — exactly as agreed, always on time, I might add. Where is the duplicity in that?'

'Where's the duplicity? Just look at you, trying to wriggle out now, to cheat me out of coin I'm owed!'

Marco had at this stage worked himself into such a rage that he strode across the room, looming over me and bellowing. I took an involuntary step backwards, hating myself for flinching. I felt Antonio's hand on my elbow, and Miriam's presence by my side, steadying me, holding me still. I tried to calm down.

'What coin are you talking about? Our rent is up to date, paid in full.'

'The rent for the rest of the year, as promised!'

'Where did Esther promise that?' asked Antonio, in mild tones.

'She said they wanted to stay for a whole year, when asking me to rent the property to her family,' said Marco.

'You've said that,' said Antonio, 'but what did she actually promise to do? Did she sign a written contract, or make a verbal agreement to stay for a year, and pay you a year's rent?'

'Anyone who says they want to stay in a house for a year is agreeing to pay that year's rent,' said Marco, sounding aggrieved.

'Esther, why don't you tell me the specifics of what you agreed to, since Marco seems unwilling to do so,' said Antonio to me.

'It was a verbal agreement. We agreed upon a weekly amount, to be paid no later than the Friday morning of each week, in return for letting my sisters and me rent the place.'

'Ah,' said Antonio, nodding with an expression of supreme satisfaction on his face. 'So where does the year's rent come in? It would seem there's a bit of confusion on this point.'

'Marco asked us how long we would like to stay in the place, but we certainly made no agreement, verbal or otherwise, for a year's lease. In fact, he was very emphatic about the fact that as our landlord, he had the right to throw us out of the house with a week's notice, should he so desire. It was a contract renewed week by week upon payment of the rent.'

Marco swelled up with indignation. 'And you'll just take her word for this? A worthless liar like her?'

Normally this pile of insults would have hurt, no matter how little I let it show. But this time it was different. I had someone to take my side.

'It all comes back to your verbal contract,' said Antonio, addressing his words to me, as if Marco's interjection was nothing more than the buzzing of a fly. 'The specific things you agreed to. Anything outside that — no matter if it formed part of a conversation you had with Marco prior to making that contract — is irrelevant. A contract cannot be stretched to contain things outside the specific and exact promises agreed to — otherwise it becomes impossible to fulfill.'

'Well,' I said, trying to hide the note of growing triumph in my voice, 'in that case it is as I say. We agreed to a price, a frequency at which I would be expected to pay it, and the day of the week by which that payment had to be in Marco's hands. Nothing else.'

'You see,' said Antonio, turning now to Marco, 'it is as Esther says. She agreed to pay you week by week to rent that house, and as long as she paid you on time, the contract remained in place for the next week. She is now telling you that she is not going to pay you for another week, meaning she is no longer renting the house. The terms of the contract are silent when it comes to its length: it is at once a week, and forever. Payment of rent for a year doesn't come into it at all.'

'Well,' said Marco haughtily, clearly attempting to wrest back control of the situation, 'it's only Tuesday. I'll expect payment for the remainder of the week, to cover for any gap I might have between tenants.'

I suspected Antonio thought I might try and fight that, but this demand, while unreasonable (I knew for a fact that Marco would have new tenants installed by the end of the day), was one I had been anticipating, and it didn't feel worth digging my heels in. I had come prepared, and set the coins in Marco's hand, waiting while he made an ostentatious show of counting them and adding them to the large pouch he had tied under his cloak.

'I don't know why you would take that Jew's word over mine,' he muttered peevishly. 'She's a grasping, greedy cheat — everyone knows she twists words to squeeze more coins out of honest citizens. They're all liars, and she's the worst of them.'

'The only person in this room trying to twist words is you,' said Antonio in response. 'You shouldn't make contracts if you aren't prepared to fulfill exactly what they require of you. You can't go about attaching anything you want to them later — how is that an honest way to conduct yourself?'

'This is all getting a bit self-righteous, don't you think?' Miriam muttered to me, but I shushed her.

'I think that concludes proceedings,' said Antonio. Having spent the past ten days anxiously and surreptitiously studying his expression in case I needed a quick warning of his changing mood, it appeared that he was attempting to hide a rather smug smile.

Marco seemed to know when he'd been beaten.

'I want all of your belongings out of that house by the end of the day!' he shouted, as the three of us left the room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves mention of antisemitic verbal abuse.


	8. Chapter 8

I fumed and raged all the way back to Antonio's house. The argument with Marco — although it had had a satisfying resolution — had wrung me out. I was so frustrated with the constant need to defend myself, and the constant assumptions of bad faith, deceptiveness, and fraud that others always made about me. It left me tense, always bracing for a fight, and viewing every person with whom I interacted as someone immediately disposed to dislike and mistrust me. That my suspicions in this regard were almost always confirmed only made me angrier and more guarded in my interactions.

It was exhausting to feel this way. Half an hour being shouted at by Marco left me flushed in the face, and breathless, as if I had run a great distance. I was so distracted that I forgot that we would need to collect our remaining belongings from our old house, and we had to double back when we were almost in Antonio's street. This, inevitably, did nothing to improve my mood. I sniped at Antonio when he lifted Miriam and me up through the back window (the front door having remained barred since our last visit), and was abrupt and impatient, ordering Miriam about in my haste to clear the house out as quickly as possible.

There were only three rooms, and it really should not have taken much time to collect anything that remained. However, Antonio didn't know where anything was kept — and seemed hesitant to rummage around in storage chests — and I was emotional and flustered, so everything took longer than I felt was necessary. Miriam was the only one of us working at a normal pace, stripping bedding and clothing from the bedroom with ruthless efficiency. Occasionally she called out to me, asking if it was necessary to keep certain items, but for the most part she didn't seem to require any company or conversation.

Antonio and I had finished the second room (I had thoroughly checked a number of hiding places behind loose bits of the wall, under tiles on the floor, and within items of furniture, but the existence of such caches, and their emptiness, provoked no response from him), and moved on to the kitchen. He held out a cloth pouch, and I transferred crockery, cutlery, and cooking utensils to him. I'd had to sell most such items when we left the ghetto. I could sense his merchant's eye upon each meagre handful, assessing its quality — which was poor. After selling anything worth the slightest amount of coin, only the rubbish remained.

'I suppose I should make some effort to clean this place up,' I said, kicking at the ashes in the kitchen fireplace.

'I can see why you'd feel unenthusiastic about that,' Antonio said. 'That Marco is a thoroughly unpleasant man — it was outrageous that he should have tried to claim you owed him the remainder of the year's rent!'

'Did I tell him where I was living now?' I asked. 'I have to admit that by the end I was so angry I wasn't paying proper attention. If Marco doesn't know I'm living with you, I could probably get away with leaving this place in a horrible state, as there's no way he could track me down and cause trouble, or try to wring more money out of me.'

Antonio gave me a look. 'Whether you told him or not, isn't there a kind of satisfaction in doing the right thing in response to someone who's behaved atrociously?'

'Of course _you_ would say something like that,' I said in mild irritation, gathering a broom and beginning to sweep the ashes away.

'Don't misunderstand me,' said Antonio. 'I'm _offended_ on your behalf that it was such an uphill battle merely to break a lease. That Marco was distrustful, aggressive, and rude from the instant you walked into the room — he assumed the worst of you before you'd even opened your mouth, and seemed to think that by merely taking your money and renting this house to you, he was doing you some kind of favour!'

'You noticed that too?' I said, bitterly.

I took out my frustration on the dirty fireplace, cleaning it perhaps more aggressively than it warranted. Antonio had finished tying the pouch of kitchen utensils closed, and hovered next to me, casting his eyes around the kitchen in case we'd missed any items.

'Could you check on Miriam?' I asked. I wanted to get him out of the way — thinking about the argument with Marco was making me emotional, and I was uncomfortably close to tears.

Once Antonio had left the room, I broke down completely. I tried to keep quiet — if there was one thing I was good at, it was crying unobtrusively — but it was hopeless. Within minutes, I was completely overwhelmed, crying with gulping sobs. The other two must have heard me, and within moments, Antonio was back in the room.

'Esther, Esther,' he said in shock as he returned to the kitchen. With two strides, he was at my side, clasping my ash-covered hands in his own. I made an abortive attempt to stop crying, but it was useless. My body shook with sobs.

'I'm so sorry that ghastly landlord has had this effect on you,' Antonio continued. 'I'm ... I'm sorry for a lot of things, although right now I'm more angry than sorrowful. What a disgrace that man is — trying to wring a mountain of extra money out of you, accusing you of cheating him, pretending he didn't understand the terms of the verbal contract you'd made! What a way to conduct his business affairs — how could any contract of his be trusted, if he's going to accuse the other party of cheating at no provocation?'

I let Antonio continue ranting in this vein for several minutes. Oddly enough, his outrage on my behalf was even more effective than his sympathy. My tears subsided, and I let Antonio's indignation wash over me, looking at his hands, which still held my own. Both of us were completely covered in the ash and dust of the fireplace. Miriam's voice cut through my reverie.

'Are you two finished in here? Finished clearing up, I mean — it's obvious that you'll _never_ be finished getting righteously indignant. It's refreshing that your ire is directed at someone else instead of each other, in fact — more of this, please!'

This waspish observation cut Antonio off mid-flow. Looking somewhat unnerved, he helped me to my feet, and the three of us left the house — I hoped for the last time — through the front door, leaving it unbarred. Laden down with the last of my sisters' and my belongings, we began the journey back to Antonio's house. I supposed I should try to start thinking of it as our house, although that still felt wrong.

*

My mood when we returned to the house was somewhat pensive. The others seemed to sense that I wanted to be left alone with my thoughts, and congregated loudly in the courtyard, the younger girls rushing back and forth in some convoluted game they had invented while Miriam, Antonio and I had been away. I spent some time unpacking the handful of bedding, clothes, and other belongings into the chests in the bedroom I now shared with my sisters, and stowing the meagre amount of valuable items in the various hiding places I'd identified in the room. I tried to be as thorough and leisurely as possible, and pretended to myself that this was due to perfectionism, and not a reluctance to be among other people.

When I had finished in the bedroom, I went downstairs to the still empty kitchen, and started unloading the cutlery and other utensils into the appropriate locations. The fact that there was room for them — that the useful tools of the house in which I had lived with my sisters each had their own space in Antonio's kitchen — was making me emotional in a manner that I found overwhelming. It seemed absurd to feel weepy over the old brown and cream bowls in which my mother used to serve soup nestling neatly among the stacks of Antonio's crockery, and yet there I was, sniffling over the kitchen table. 

But it wasn't merely that there was space for our belongings — that in this house, a space had been made for _us_ — as astonishing as that was. What had truly rendered me speechless, and caused me to flee the company of Antonio and my sisters, was the fact that, for the first time in my life, someone outside my family — and outside the small cluster of neighbours in the Jewish community — had witnessed me experiencing injustice, and had truly seen what was going on. Antonio had been in the room when Marco spewed hatred at me from the minute I arrived, had listened to what was said, and drawn the correct conclusions. He had been outraged and appalled. He had not tried to explain away Marco's hostility or partially blame me for it, and he had said clearly to me that this hostility was entirely unprovoked. That he had stuck up for me was of course very welcome, but in the whole scheme of things it was almost inconsequential: his recognition of what was going on mattered so much more to me.

Given all the fraught history that lay behind and between me and Antonio, these were uncomfortable thoughts. Was I prepared to ignore all that, to sweep it all away, to pretend that it had been forgotten, solely out of gratitude that he had belatedly become my defender? He had tormented me just as badly — and encouraged the torments of others — in the past as the actions of Marco which had so outraged him today. Forgiving that, or letting him forget it for a moment, felt very, very wrong. The pair of us had lived for so long in a world made up of contracts, commerce and exchange, and it felt safer to retreat to that again — to let everything between us be a transaction. And yet it had been trusting in such things — assuming contracts and transactions were always solid and reliable, rather than bending to public whim and the demands of the mob — that had caused such grief and violence to me in the past.

The strength of my reaction to Antonio's outburst against Marco, and his measured, calm arguments against the landlord's bluster, frightened me. I found it hard to confront my feelings on the matter, and shied away from doing so. I had lived so much of my life in a defensive frenzy, fighting for myself and my sisters, knowing that no one else would come to our aid. Antonio's genuine, spontaneous kindness unmoored me — and I was afraid of what that meant.


	9. Chapter 9

The days drifted on by. We settled into something resembling a routine — meals together, when we could, long stretches of time left to our own devices when Antonio's work took him to the docks, warehouses, and shopfronts of his partners and clients. Marina and Giovanni seemed to have taken the permanent presence of five supposed converts, the oldest of whom possessed a terrible reputation, in their stride. I had to restrain them from constantly slipping sweets to my youngest sisters.

Miriam, Chaya and Naomi seemed to have decided that they were now free to leave the house whenever they wanted. They didn't stray far — occasional trips to nearby shops and markets seemed to be the extent of it — but they went further than I myself was able to bring myself to roam. One afternoon I heard their laughter floating up through one of the rear windows, and looked out to see them — along with Malkah — perched on the edge of the canal, faces flushed in the sunshine, eyes shining, happiness almost radiating from their bodies. I envied them their easy sense of security. Although my ankle had healed, and I had regained the ability to walk without pain, the thought of leaving the house made my heart turn to ice. Thankfully, there were at least enough things with which to occupy myself indoors that I didn't get bored. 

In spite of what Miriam had said about the poetic justice of eating and drinking at Antonio's expense, I felt uncomfortable being too extravagant, and worried that we might be seen as not doing enough to earn our keep. I did what I could to help Marina and Giovanni with food preparation — apart from anything else, this was an easy way to ensure there was never any pork or shellfish on the table, though these unfortunately remained the only rules of kashrut that I felt able to enforce. Without consulting the others, I also took it upon myself to care for the plants that grew in the courtyard — a mixture of ornamental trees, and more practical things, such as herbs, and lemon and orange trees. With my sisters growing in independence and confidence day by day, at least it gave me something to fuss over.

*

I generally tried to be an early riser, but one morning I overslept. Malkah, Chaya and Miriam were still curled up asleep around me, but Naomi had left the room. I felt an involuntary surge of fear, remembering her flight from the house, hobbling around the city with Antonio looking for her, desperate with worry and frantic with anxiety as my mind raced ahead to the most disastrous possibilities. In my fretful haste, I didn't even bother to dress fully, flinging a cloak and skirt over my rumpled sleeping shirt and racing downstairs in bare feet.

By the time I reached the kitchen, I knew that I was being ridiculous. In any case, I could hear their voices: Naomi's, bright and excitable, doing most of the talking, Antonio's an occasional rumbling interjection. She seemed to be telling him a story. I paused outside the room, listening.

Naomi _loved_ telling stories. Of all of us, she had the best memory for it, absorbing tales like a sponge. When our father was still alive, she used to pester him for recollections of his travels, of his time spent outside Venice, and the lives and ways of unfamiliar people. But above all things, she had a vivid imagination, and a boundless well of enthusiastic creativity. In the past, she had delighted in a captive audience — our sisters, neighbours, market stallholders. In the six months since we had left the ghetto, however, her tongue had stilled, and she had rarely made up stories — at least not in my hearing. That her words had been unlocked by _Antonio_, of all people, was so astonishing that it brought me to a halt.

I didn't dare to move, lest my arrival break the fragile spell which had caused Naomi's words to tumble forth. I hovered outside the kitchen, listening to the rise and fall of her voice, weaving a tale of sea voyages, mistaken identity, fortunes lost and restored, dazzling treasures, and islands inhabited only by birds. Antonio, for his part, seemed genuinely happy and entranced by her story, keeping quiet apart from the occasional exclamation of surprise or admiration. I observed that these came at entirely the correct moments — he was either really listening, or giving a very good impression of doing so. 

When Naomi appeared to have reached something resembling a conclusion (the king's daughter revealed she'd been pretending to be a pirate so that she could sail over the horizon and see what existed beyond it, the sea dragon shed its skin to reveal himself as her lost childhood friend), I shuffled awkwardly into the room.

'Good morning, Esther,' said Antonio. 'Naomi's been entertaining me with what she assures me is the first installment of the extensive adventures of the pirate princess Serafina and her stalwart friend Davide the palace baker's son.'

Naomi lounged on the kitchen bench, a cup of warm milk in her hands, and an untouched plate of fresh bread and cheese on the table before her.

'I see that storytelling is thirsty work,' I said, helping myself to piece of bread. And then, to Antonio, 'I hope you had enough time this morning to listen to stories.'

'I always have time for that,' he said, offering me the cheese with a smile.

*

Some days later, I was interrupted when sweeping out the courtyard by the sound of Chaya's excitable voice in the entrance to the house. I set the broom aside, and hastened to join her, concerned that something might be amiss. I shouldn't have worried. Chaya was practically bouncing up and down with glee, her arms laden with fresh fruit, fish, and small cakes. Antonio brought up the rear, carrying bulky, wrapped packages.

I looked at him with a question in my eyes, but Chaya gambolled on ahead into the courtyard, her eyes sparkling. The two of us followed.

'Can you believe,' asked Chaya in incredulity, laying her purchases down on one of the benches, 'that no one has ever shown Antonio how to haggle at the market before?'

He shot me an expression which clearly said, _don't spoil her fun_, and said, 'go on, then, Chaya. Tell her.'

'Do you know he was just going to accept the fishmonger's price?' she said, in tones which clearly suggested this was an outrage of the gravest nature.

'I'm very lucky that Chaya was around to accompany me and set me straight. She showed me exactly what to do.'

'I told that fishmonger that there was no way we would be paying such a ridiculous price when we could get better fish the next square over for half the cost, and anyway, his fish looked _old_. And that wasn't true — look, it's really fresh, Esther — but that's what you always do, so I said it, and it worked! And then Antonio did the same thing with the fruit, and the stallholder actually _apologised_ to him! And then we both haggled with the cloth-seller, and knocked a third off the asking price. I never did that before, Esther, I just watched you and Miriam, and I thought none of the sellers would do what I asked, because I'm just a girl, but they did listen to me, and it worked!'

I refrained from stating the obvious point that it was probably Antonio's presence, with his obviously expensive clothes and well-made boots, that had done more to persuade the stallholders than the posturing of a scrawny twelve-year-old girl. Antonio's gentle elbow to the ribs was an entirely unnecessary warning — what did he think of me, that I would puncture the uncomplicated happiness of my younger sister, who was clearly delighted at her own supposed haggling skills?

'The cloth is for you and the girls, if you want it,' said Antonio. 'I don't know what your stores of clothes are like' — this was an obvious, if polite fiction: his merchant's eye was well aware of the dire state of all our possessions, given he'd helped me pack up our belongings on two occasions — 'but I do know that your youngest sisters are still growing, and may need to replace things they've grown out of.'

My protest at accepting such largesse (the cloth, I observed with my own discerning former moneylender's eye, while not ostentatiously rich, was of exquisite quality) seemed even more perfunctory than usual. Over time, my reluctance to be in Antonio's debt had worn away, helped in no small part by his moments of patience and generosity with my sisters. I tried forcibly to remind myself that all this could be an act — an attempt to reassure me into a sense of safety which would be ripped away from me at the worst possible moment — but it was difficult. And that, itself, was the most difficult thing of all. I felt disarmed, and I wasn't altogether sure that I liked that feeling.

*

Antonio good-naturedly humoring Chaya and Naomi was one thing — Naomi in particular was open-hearted and too trusting for her own good, willing to talk to anyone. It was easy for most people to be friendly to those sisters in spite of themselves. Miriam was another matter — prickly and shy, and more cautious even than me when dealing with the world. She was certainly not the kind of person to voluntarily spend time with people she perceived as being outside the family circle.

Therefore, I was very surprised to encounter her in the kitchen, crouched up against the table next to Antonio, hunched over a stack of parchment. She had an uninked wooden pen in her hand, which she was running rapidly down the top sheet, her eyes darting from side to side as she scanned the document.

'That's your trouble, right there,' she said to Antonio, using the pen to point at a section of text. 'Whoever wrote this repeated a line of figures and therefore calculated the wrong cost. No wonder you thought it looked unnecessarily expensive!'

'That would be me,' Antonio said ruefully. 'The fool who lost concentration and doubled the cost of saffron, I mean.'

The pair of them spotted me in the doorway.

'Miriam is helping me go over my books,' said Antonio, gesturing for me to join them at the table. 'It's a good thing that I have her sharp eye to keep me in line — do you know she's already spotted five errors that cost me money?'

'I can well believe it,' I replied.

Miriam gathered the stack of parchment in her hands and moved it to the far end of the table, signalling that her work was complete for the moment. She passed around a bowl of dried apples, which I could see she had been grazing on as fuel for her calculations and accounting.

'I'm finished for now,' she told Antonio, who nodded. 'And this doesn't necessarily mean I like you! Although I must say that letting me witness all your various bookkeeping mishaps and incompetent accounting is extremely entertaining.'

With that said, she crammed a final handful of apples into her mouth, and swept from the room, leaving us with the impression that she'd done a great favour in gracing us with her presence.

*

Several days later, I woke in the middle of the night to the realisation that Malkah was no longer in the bed we shared. This wasn't an immediate cause for alarm — she was a restless sleeper, and frequently woke, got bored of the bed she was in, and switched to sleeping in with Miriam, Chaya and Naomi, sometimes switching back and forth several times a night. But I could see, when I checked, out of anxious habit, that there were only three of my sisters in the other bed, and none of them was Malkah. She wasn't elsewhere in the room. She was nowhere to be seen. My mind already leaping to the worst conclusions, I threw a cloak over my sleeping clothes and fled from the room, tense with fear and worry.

It was dark on the stairs, and there was no sign of Malkah. I couldn't imagine where she might have gone — my sisters knew not to roam around the house at night, and although we didn't necessarily travel in a pack at all times, none of them, not even Malkah, left our bedroom until the sun had risen. The house felt even more vast and empty in the blackness of night, every wide open space full of potentially lurking dangers. I felt uneasy as I crossed the courtyard, and the coldness of the stones reminded me that I had left the bedroom with bare feet. There was a time when I would never have ventured into the possibility of danger so unprepared — I'd been lulled into complacency in this house, and had forgotten all my own rules about moving about the world ready to flee at a moment's notice.

I could see light coming from the kitchen, spilling into the entrance hall which linked it to the courtyard. I followed its path.

The tableau which greeted me rendered me speechless with delighted shock. Antonio perched on one of the benches, his long legs stretched out under the table, a half-empty cup at one elbow. He looked as if he scarcely dared to move.

Curled up on the bench beside him was Malkah, fast asleep. Even in that awkward position she seemed relaxed, her feet occasionally twitching and kicking against Antonio's leg. This torment he endured stoically, but as someone who frequently shared a bed with my youngest sister I knew how painfully she could kick! As I drew closer, I could see that her little hands were balled into fists, with the remnants of cake clutched inside. Her face looked a bit flushed, but otherwise she appeared to be deep in peaceful sleep.

'She had a nightmare, I think,' whispered Antonio. He spoke so softly I had to draw my head close to his to make out the words. 'I'm astonished you didn't hear her — she was prowling around the stairs between our rooms, crying loudly. She didn't want to go back into your room, so I figured I would take her down here and give her something to eat and drink until she'd calmed down — that's hot (or rather, cold, by now) milk and honey in the cup.'

'Obviously your plan worked too well,' I said, 'since you are now trapped here at the table, doomed to be kicked by her hard little heels for the rest of the night.'

'I don't mind being kicked by a four-year-old if it helps make the nightmares go away,' he said. 'I don't think I've ever seen someone more distressed.'

He was sitting so awkwardly on the bench, as if afraid the slightest movement would provoke a fresh wave of wailing and nightmares from Malkah, and I found myself feeling oddly unmoored by this compassion and consideration, shown to a four-year-old child. My previous opinion of Antonio — that he was motivated almost solely by public opinion and perception, even his acts of magnanimity being something of a calculated display — was slowly shifting. Mine was the opinion that mattered least of all in Venice — there was no need to behave in ways that impressed me, treating my sisters with patience and kindness, making what had started out as desperate, temporary refuge feel more like a home. Six months ago, my cynical reaction to all this would have been to assume that _I_ had become Antonio's audience — that his desire for praise and display was so overwhelming that even in front of someone he viewed with derision he began performing the kinds of acts that I would find admirable in spite of himself. But I was incapable of maintaining that kind of suspicion in the face of all that I had witnessed.

I scooped Malkah into my arms, eliciting a gasp from Antonio.

'Now that she's asleep, she won't wake again, even if we were to parade a troupe of singing gondoliers through the room,' I said. 'I can tell by the way her face looks — although it's understandable that you wouldn't recognise it as her expression of deep sleep. Shall we go back upstairs?'

Cradling Malkah, I made my way from the room, Antonio slowing his long stride beside me, the light of his candle pooling around us.

I laid Malkah back in the bed, then slipped back out into the staircase, where Antonio had been waiting in the landing between our two rooms. Without my sister between us I felt awkward and shy. My previous refuge in uncomfortable moments had been bluster and sarcasm, but I couldn't resort to that now. Antonio broke the silence.

'Is she sleeping, still?' he asked, and again his voice was so low that I had to crane my neck upwards in order to hear. Noticing my predicament, he bent lower, so that our faces were closer.

'You don't need to whisper,' I said. 'Once Malkah gets back to sleep, she tends to stay that way.'

'You do have three other sisters, all of whom are sleeping on the other side of that door,' he replied. It was a fair point, and once again I felt a rush of emotion at how careful he was being towards us all.

Miriam would probably say I was being sentimental, or warn me of the risks of expecting so little of people that standard polite consideration seemed praiseworthy. After a lifetime of greeting the world outside my family and immediate neighbourhood with guarded tenseness, shield up in advance to protect against the cruelty I was sure — with good reason — was on the immediate horizon, I was tired of feeling cautious. I was tired of bracing in anticipation for the next blow, and tired of warning myself away from accepting kindness at face value.

Antonio was looking at me as if expecting a sharp retort, but his eyes were gentle. I was suddenly aware of our closeness, of the narrowness of the landing, of my own thin cloak and disheveled hair. When drawing my cloak closer, my arm brushed his, and it felt as if the air between us hummed and sparked. Neither of us seemed to move for a moment, frozen in the same realisation. I was the one to close the gap between us — later I wondered how I had managed to overcome my surprise and fear — and I reached up, drawing his face down to mine, and kissed him. For a few anxiety-ridden seconds he appeared immobile with shock, but then he pulled me closer, tangling his hands in my hair. His lips felt very warm.

Part of my mind was horrified at what I'd just done — it was going to make my already complicated life even more complicated in so many different ways — but those thoughts were swiftly overwhelmed. It was hard to tell how much time had passed, and for a while my whole world shrunk to hands, and lips, and the long arms around me. I could feel my cloak slipping down towards the floor.

After what felt like hours but was more likely mere moments, we pulled apart. My heart was racing, and I could feel that my face was flushed. It felt as if my whole skin was singing. My hands were clasping Antonio's, and I let him go with a shiver of embarrassment. I didn't dare look him in the eyes, for fear of what I might see there.

He seemed to be trying to say something, but the awkwardness of the moment was unbearable, so I cut him off with a mumbled _good night_, and fled to the relative sanctuary of the room I shared with my sisters, leaning against the closed door, trying to control the rush of my blood, and the press of my own flood of thoughts.

The greying light spilling through the window indicated it was a long time before dawn, but I was unable to return to sleep, and lay unmoving beside Malkah, my mind racing off in myriad branching, maze-like directions. None of them was calming.


	10. Chapter 10

The next morning, Malkah and Naomi woke me up by clattering around the room, caught up in their own imagined world. I had slept poorly, waking at what seemed like every half-hour to fret and worry about what had passed between Antonio and me in the landing, the night before. I couldn't bear to face him, and couldn't imagine how I was going to contain my feelings if I had to do so across the breakfast table, surrounded by my boisterous sisters. One of the girls had thrown the shutters open, and the warm sunlight spilled across the room. Its brightness hurt. My head ached with exhaustion, and I wondered if it would be possible to fall back asleep, even in the face of Malkah's increasingly loud shrieking.

Miriam put paid to that idea, sitting up abruptly and marshalling our other sisters into some semblance of order, helping Naomi tie back her cloud of red hair, wiping Malkah's face, and hunting down Chaya's missing shoes. She looked at me as if wondering why I wasn't at her side, bossily insisting on taking over.

I mumbled something about feeling ill and headachy, and rolled over with a groan. Pleading sickness was a weak excuse, but at least it would allow me to avoid that first, awkward breakfast. With any luck, Antonio's work would take him far outside the house today — I was hoping for long hours spent talking to his agents at the docks — and I could put off speaking to him until I felt less embarrassed. I pushed aside the troubling thought that I couldn't imagine my embarrassment ever lessening, and that I had somehow put my sisters' safety and fragile sense of normalcy at risk.

Miriam and the others left for breakfast. Naomi offered to sneak some food back upstairs, but my appetite had vanished, and the thought of eating made me feel sick. I lay in bed, willing myself to at least go back to sleep and remove the fog of tiredness, but rest eluded me. Instead, I was left with my own worrying thoughts, which inevitably took a catastrophic turn. My anxiety rushed from one terrifying path to the next. What if Antonio, appalled at my behaviour, made us leave, and used his new knowledge of the flimsiness of our 'conversion' against us? What did it say about me that I had thrown myself at the very person responsible for my family's perilous situation, who had in the past hurt and humiliated me so badly? I must loathe myself very much to feel affection and attraction towards someone who had done the things that Antonio had done to me, I thought miserably. I had spent so many years making myself as hard as coins and cold and sharp as a knife to the heart, guarding any hint of softness from the world, only to find that it had all been self-deception, shattered as easily as Venetian glass.

It felt as if hours passed in this manner, my mind cycling through its various worries, my thoughts pressing in unavoidably like a flock of insistent pigeons. I gave up on sleep entirely, and tried to focus on banal tasks — tidying the bedding, airing the spare clothing that we kept in a chest in a corner, checking all the caches of valuables that I'd scattered in hiding spots around the room. The latter task was sheer paranoia: at this point we barely had any valuables worthy of the name, and no one entered the bedroom other than my sisters and me. But it was a steady, boring, methodical activity, and I hoped it would bring me calm. Instead all it did was worry me further: we had so little left in the way of money, or other items that could be sold, that if we had to leave Antonio's we would struggle to afford to pay rent anywhere in the city. Still, I counted the coins, and the other bits and pieces, and let their weight lay in my hand.

My sisters had not returned upstairs after breakfast, but this in itself was not odd — they normally preferred to stay in the lower reaches of the house during the day, drifting between the courtyard, the street and square outside, and the canals at the back of the house, and wandering back into the kitchen whenever they got hungry, Malkah pestering Marina to make cakes. But I had assumed that Miriam at least might have come back up to check on me, armed with herbal tisanes to soothe my supposed headache.

This expectation of Miriam's arrival meant that I wasn't shocked or confused by the knock at the door. Without thinking, I responded to the knock with a shout of _come in_. Almost as soon as the words were out of my mouth I realised my mistake: this was Miriam's room as it was my own, and she would never have knocked. Like all of my sisters, she would have simply walked in. There was only one person in this house who would knock before entering this room, and I had just welcomed him in.

'It's me,' Antonio announced, rather pointlessly, as he pushed open the door.

Feeling flustered, I motioned for him to sit next to me on the chair beside the window.

'Your four sisters have gone out to the market,' Antonio said. 'I heard Chaya announce she was going to teach the youngest girls how to haggle, so no doubt they will be away for quite a while.'

There was an awkward pause as I shifted in the seat, knowing we had to address what had happened the night before, and wishing that he would be the one to break the silence so that I didn't have to do so. I didn't know how to begin such a conversation. For once, it seemed, my wishes were granted.

'What happened in the landing outside,' Antonio said, sounding hesitant, 'last night, I mean. I hope you didn't feel that you _had_ to do that. I hope you didn't think of it as some kind of payment required for living in my house. I hope you know I would never ask such things of you.'

I had a moment of intense internal indignation, but it passed. I could sense my face flushing as I wondered whether to keep denying the truth of what I was feeling. Certainly I was confident I could muster the correct air of offended outrage — but did I want to?

'What we did last night — I ... I wanted to do it. Kissing you, I mean.'

I risked a quick sideways glance at him. He looked as emotional as I felt, but for all his usual verbosity, he appeared lost for words.

'Oh,' said Antonio, eventually.

'In fact,' I said, figuring I might as well plunge in deeper while I had this rare moment of courage and honesty, 'I ... I kind of want to do that some more.'

'Oh,' said Antonio again.

Any further words he might have uttered were prevented from escaping as I kissed him. This was much less unwieldy than the night before: sitting side by side in the window chair meant our disparity in height was less of a problem, although I felt myself losing my balance slightly as I stretched upwards. I drew his arms around me, feeling his hands trace fire down my sides.

Antonio was the one to pull away.

'No, wait,' he said. 'Before you distract me any more with this I think I need to say some things. I don't deserve what you're doing — what you say you feel about me — unless I am able to get these words out first.'

'Well, if you insist,' I said, with an air of deep grievance. I didn't let go of his hand, though, and continued twisting my fingers through his.

Antonio picked up the thread of conversation. 'Esther, it should not have taken you running in terror from a mob and falling through my doorway for me to truly see you and to be ashamed of what I did to you. In fact, my shame is greater because that's what it took. It should not have taken you living in my house with your sisters, making yourself vulnerable to me, forcing yourself to give voice to truths you'd have preferred to keep unspoken, making your fear and rage and kindness visible to me, for me to truly understand the cruelty of what I did to you and your family. I don't know if an apology is helpful at this point: what I took from you was monstrous. It wasn't just money and community — it was your final, fragile remaining sense of security: a trust in the law and its justice. I was very afraid and outraged that day, and when I was reprieved, all those swirling emotions were redirected into furious revenge. That's an explanation, not an excuse. I was afraid, I didn't like feeling afraid, and so I was vengeful.

'The fact that I felt I was being merciful and was celebrated as such at the time is more monstrous still. The whole city applauded what I did as a show of great and undeserved mercy, and I basked in that applause! As I say, what I did was monstrous. If you want an apology I will give you one every single day. I'm so sorry and ashamed. But I'd rather ask you what you want me to do. What would be meaningful for you?'

During this outburst I'd scarcely dared to breathe. It was painful to be reminded of those times, but it was wrong to embark on whatever it was we were about to do without discussing our past with honesty. It was an ugliness we needed to confront.

'You asked me what I want,' I said, carefully, weighing each word in my mind. 'What I wanted was for you to see — really see — what you had done to us, to understand what it meant. I can see that you do now. You're right, I don't want an apology. An apology is just words. I have not had much luck with words. Words are twisted little weapons, vicious. They're like a dagger, slipping in under my armour. Words are just the start. What I want from you are deeds. I've already seen them from you: you gave us shelter, you listened to me and my fears, you spoke up for me when I had to break the lease, you're gentle and patient with my sisters, and you've built something like trust with them. What I want is a lifetime of that. I don't want mountains of gold, or public self-flagellation in the cathedral sqauare, or grandiose daily apologies. What I want to see is the same thing I'm already seeing: the small, unglamorous acts of everyday compassion and kindness, building and sustaining the kind of trust that lasts a lifetime.'

'Does this mean you want to be with me for a lifetime?' asked Antonio.

'I've just told you how easily words can be used to deceive, and already you're twisting my words!' I said, but my tone was teasing and gentle.

'I suppose it will take a lifetime to find out.'

**Author's Note:**

> This fic diverges from canon in two major ways: Shylock is a young woman, and she is the oldest of five sisters. Her father was a moneylender, and she witnssed the various antisemitic attacks and abuses he experienced. Upon his death, she took over his business, and it was she who experienced the events of The Merchant of Venice. In this AU, the character of Jessica, and her subplot, is missing.


End file.
